THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
RIVERSIDE 


RENASCENCE   PORTRAITS 


ip 
Renascence  Portraits 


BY 
PAUL  VAN  DYKE,  D.  D. 

PROFESSOR    IN    HISTORY,    PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY 
AUTHOR  OF  THE  AGE  OF  THE  RENASCENCE 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1905 


C  /3  3 

V  35 


COPYBIGHT,   1905,   BY 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published,  September,  1905 


NEC  •  FAMAE  •  NEQVE  •  AVRO  • 

SED  •  GAVDIO  •  STVDIORVM  • 

SPE-QVOQVE-OTII-AMICORVM-OBLECTANDI' 


PREFACE 

This  book  tries  to  illustrate  the  Renascence  by  describ- 
ing three  men  who  were  affected  by  it  and  who  were  all 
living  at  the  same  time  in  Italy,  England  and  Germany. 
For  such  an  attempt  to  illustrate  the  Renascence  a  variety 
of  .reasons  suggested  the  choice  of  Pietro  Aretino, 
Thomas  Cromwell  and  Maximilian  I.  One  important 
reason  is  that  they  are  all  more  or  less  unknown  to  the 
ordinary  reader  of  history  in  English.  On  Aretino  there 
is  almost  nothing  in  English  except  four  pages  of  Buck- 
hardt  written  many  years  ago.  In  German  there  is  little 
more.  The  older  French  and  Italian  writers,  and  some  of 
the  newer  ones,  show  him  out  of  focus  and  without  due 
regard  to  the  perspective  of  history.  Cromwell  is  known 
by  a  caricature  rather  than  by  a  portrait.  In  the  essay  of 
the  Appendix :  Reginald  Pole  and  Thomas  Cromwell,  the 
writer  believes  that  he  has  shown  the  origin  of  the  exag- 
gerations of  this  current  caricature  in  the  distorted  ac- 
count of  Cromwell's  bitterest  enemy.  Of  Maximilian 
there  are  accounts  in  English;  a  short  one  has  recently 
been  printed  as  the  Stanhope  Historical  Essay  by  Seton 
Watson  of  New  College,  Oxford.  But  none  attempts  to 
use  the  best  means  for  the  interpretation  of  his  character 
— Maximilian's  own  writings.  Indeed,  until  recently  it 
was  not  possible  to  do  so  for  they  were  ascribed  to  his 
secretaries.  Whatever  light  these  three  men  may  throw 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

upon  the  Renascence  will,  therefore,  seem  to  the  ordinary 
reader  more  illuminating  because  it  is  new  to  him. 

For  this  book  is  addressed  to  the  ordinary  reader  and 
the  writer  frankly  confesses  a  desire  to  be  interesting. 
And  though  he  is  willing  to  plead  guilty  at  once  to  a 
charge  of  dismal  failure  he  insists  upon  a  claim  to 
credit  for  good  intentions.  Such  a  claim,  however  hum- 
ble it  may  seem,  is  in  reality  a  little  bold.  For  a  desire  to 
be  interesting  in  writing  history  is  regarded  by  a  number 
of  historians  as  distinctly  out  of  date.  A  school,  which 
until  recently  threatened  to  become  dominant,  assures  us 
that  a  writer  on  history  has  no  more  reason  for  trying  to 
be  interesting  to  the  average  reader  of  books  than  a  writer 
on  mathematics.  One  of  them  is  credibly  reported  to 
have  thanked  God  he  had  no  style  to  tempt  him  out  of  the 
straight  and  narrow  path  of  scientific  exactness. 

But  the  right  of  literature  to  try  to  keep  the  result 
of  historical  research  in  touch  with  life  is  happily  being 
re-vindicated  against  this  temporary  fashion  by  men 
whose  ability  in  the  use  of  scientific  methods  cannot  be 
disputed.  Such  words  as  these  of  Mr.  Vinogradoff  are 
gladly  echoed  in  many  minds : 

"What  I  call  literary  history,  has  by  no  means  done  its 
work.  There  is  too  much  in  the  action  of  men  that  de- 
mands artistic  perception  and  even  divination  on  the  part 
of  the  historian  to  allow  this  mode  of  treatment  to  fall 
into  decay." 

To  his  desire  to  be  interesting  the  writer  has,  however, 
set  one  limit.  An  Oxford  Professor  of  history  was  once 
asked  why  he  did  not  make  his  lectures  more  interesting. 
He  replied, — he  would  be  glad  to  do  so  if  he  saw  any  way 


PREFACE  ix 

except  by  making  them  less  true.  History  cannot  walk 
in  the  path  of  romance,  and  the  writer  has  honestly  tried 
to  follow  always  the  way  of  sober  truth.  He  has  never 
consciously  exaggerated  vices  or  heightened  virtues  to 
give  scope  for  strong  adjectives.  He  has  tried  to  avoid 
the  tone  of  the  advocate,  though  it  is  easier  to  listen  to 
than  the  tone  of  the  judge.  He  has  never  tried  to  make 
up  for  the  lack  of  exact  knowledge  about  how  things  did 
happen  by  exuberance  of  imagination  about  how  they 
might  have  happened,  and  there  is  no  item  in  his  descrip- 
tion of  any  scene  which  is  not  suggested  by  contemporary 
evidence. 

Beside  the  fact  that  he  did  not  mean  to  be  dull,  the 
writer  makes  one  other  claim  upon  the  indulgence  of  the 
reader.  He  has  tried  to  be  short.  Of  recent  years  a 
flood  of  historical  monographs  has  been  poured  forth 
in  French,  English,  German  and  Italian.  Most  of 
them  describe  with  more  or  less  minuteness  various  points 
in  the  original  contemporary  records  of  historical  events. 
But  as  a  whole  they  make  the  events  they  treat  no  clearer 
to  the  average  reader  than  they  were  before.  This  is 
especially  true  of  the  American  reader.  These  works  are 
often  difficult  to  read ;  they  are  written  in  foreign  tongues 
— they  are  scattered  in  different  libraries,  many  of  them 
cannot  be  found  in  America  at  all.  The  monographs 
must  be  interpreted  to  the  educated  public  even  as  they 
interpret  the  records  to  the  specialist. 

In  Germany,  the  home  of  the  monograph,  this  need 
has  recently  been  clearly  recognized.  The  words  of  Pro- 
fessor Baumgarten  are  an  example  of  the  recognition: 
"  The  most  painstaking  specialist  cannot  deny  that  collec- 


tions  of  sources  are  not  issued  for  their  own  sakes,  that 
the  highest  purpose  of  the  investigations  of  monographs 
does  not  consist  in  clearing  up  some  detail.  *  *  * 
When  the  most  extensive  publications,  the  most  acute 
investigations  remain  for  years  as  good  as  unused,  when 
at  last  their  enormous  extent  renders  the  review  of  them 
impossible  even  for  the  historian,  unless  he  is  willing  to 
confine,  his  interest  within  the  narrow  limits  of  a  few 
decades,  such  a  result  does  little  to  advance  true  historical 
knowledge.  To  increase  them  without  limit,  making  no 
attempt  to  draw  the  sum  of  historic  results  out  of  these 
costly  materials,  is  an  undertaking  which  is  in  direct  con- 
tradiction to  the  true  understanding  of  scientific  inves- 
tigation." 

Therefore  the  writer,  having  the  materials  for  two 
books  in  his  notes  and  the  ideas  for  a  third  in  his  head, 
decided  to  condense  them  all  within  a  single  pair  of 
covers. 

It  seems  as  if  there  were  now  some  prospect  that 
American  writers  on  history  might  be  emancipated  from 
the  tyrannous  fad  of  footnotes.  The  value  of  pages  is 
no  longer  estimated  everywhere  by  the  amount  of 
space  upon  them  occupied  in  small  print  by  miscellaneous 
observations  on  more  or  less  irrelevant  topics  and  cita- 
tions from  obvious  authorities  to  support  commonplaces. 
The  remark  made  by  Mr.  Armstrong  in  the  Bibliograph- 
ical Introduction  to  his  recent  most  interesting  Biography 
of  Charles  V.  strikes  a  responsive  chord.  "I  had  a  few 
scruples  as  to  abandoning  the  explanatory  or  supplement- 
ary footnote  which  is  often  the  fruit  of  laziness  or 
literary  incompetence,  for  it  is  far  easier  to  bury  a  stub- 


PREFACE  xi 

born  fact  or  episode  at  the  bottom  of  the  page  than  to 
make  it  a  living  portion  of  the  text." 

But  in  works  so  condensed  as  these  short  biographies 
there  are  occasional  remarks  in  the  nature  of  asides,  which 
may  make  the  subject  clearer  and  could  be  worked  into 
the  text  only  by  misplaced  ingenuity.  And  it  seemed 
wise  to  indicate  the  places  where  citations  from  con- 
temporary sources  are  to  be  found.  The  writer  was 
confirmed  in  this  practice  by  the  experience  of  searching 
all  obvious  collections  for  an  interesting  document  par- 
tially cited  by  Mr.  Armstrong,  without  being  able  to  find 
and  enjoy  the  rest  of  it. 

The  author  of  Don  Quixote  tells  in  his  preface  how 
being  one  day  in  his  study  very  uneasy  about  his  book 
because  he  had  for  it  no  quotations  for  the  margin  or 
annotations  for  the  end,  and  no  bibliography  to  place  at 
the  beginning  "  as  all  do  under  the  letters  A.  B.  C,  be- 
ginning with  Aristotle  and  ending  with  Xenophon  or 
Zoilus  or  Zeuxis,"  a  friend  came  in  and  showed  the  way 
out  of  all  his  troubles.  The  bibliography  was  easily 
settled, — "Now,"  said  the  friend, — "let  us  come  to  those 
references  to  authors  which  other  books  have  and  you 
want  for  yours.  The  remedy  for  this  is  very  simple.  You 
have  only  to  look  out  for  some  book  that  quotes  them  all, 
from  A  to  Z,  as  you  say  yourself,  and  then  insert  the 
very  same  alphabet  in  your  book.  *  *  *  For,  at  any 
rate,  if  it  answers  no  other  purpose  the  long  catalogue  of 
authors  will  serve  to  give  a  surprising  look  of  authority 
to  your  book.  Besides,  no  one  will  trouble  himself  to 
verify  whether  you  have  followed  them  or  whether  you 
have  not,  being  in  no  way  concerned  in  it." 


xii  PREFACE 

The  writer  has  not  taken  this  very  practical  advice  in 
the  preparation  of  his  bibliography.  In  regard  to  Crom- 
well and  Aretino  he  has  read  everything  which  promised 
to  throw  any  light  on  the  men.  He  has  not  been  able  to 
do  this  in  regard  to  Maximilian.  The  secondary  litera- 
ture on  the  period  of  Maximilian's  lifetime  in  Germany 
is  so  enormous  that  Ulmann,  publishing,  after  years  of 
preparation,  the  first  volume  of  a  sixteen  hundred  page 
life  of  him,  confesses  that  he  "had  not  been  able  to  reach 
an  exhaustive  review  of  all  the  writings  related  to  his 
subject." 

The  brief  list  in  the  Appendix  gives  only  a  small  part 
of  the  titles  of  the  books  that  have  been  read  in  preparing 
these  essays,  and  consists  of  full  titles  of  the  works  cited 
in  the  footnotes.  The  writer's  main  reliance  has  been 
the  Calendar  of  State  Papers,  the  writings  and  letters  of 
Aretino,  the  writings  and  letters  of  Maximilian. 

He  is  indebted  for  control  and  suggestion  to  many 
secondary  sources,  probably  to  some  not  named  in  the 
bibliography.  He  owes  very  much  for  Maximilian  to  the 
great  work  of  Professor  Ulmann,  for  Pietro  Aretino  to 
the  labors  among  the  archives,  the  acute  criticism,  the 
able  reconstruction  of  Signor  Luzio  and  Prof.  Rossi. 
But  he  is  afraid  that  for  the  book  as  a  whole  no  one 
ought  to  be  blamed  except  himself. 

Parts  of  the  material,  sometimes  in  the  form  under 
which  it  is  here  presented,  sometimes  in  different  form, 
have  appeared  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  The  Outlook 
Magazine,  Harper's  Magazine,  The  Presbyterian  Review 
(two  articles),  The  American  Historical  Review  (two 
articles). 


CONTENTS 

I.    THE  RENASCENCE     ...»•>•>«*.       I 

II.    PIETRO  ARETINO  .     .     :.     .     »,    :.     .     .     33 

III.  THOMAS  CROMWELL 138 

IV.  MAXIMILIAN  1 259 

APPENDIX — REGINALD  POLE  AND  THOMAS  CROM- 
WELL: AN  EXAMINATION  OF  THE  APOLOGIA  AD 
CAROLUM    QUINTUM 377 

LIST  OF  BOOKS  CITED 419 


RENASCENCE   PORTRAITS 

i 

THE  RENASCENCE 

THE  historian  is  no  more  able  to  tell  all  the  facts  he 
finds  in  his  authorities  than  the  chroniclers  and  makers 
of  documents  were  able  to  record  everything  that  hap- 
pened during  their  lives.  He  must  select.  And  if  he 
wishes  to  produce  anything  but  a  collection  of  anecdotes 
or  a  summary  of  miscellaneous  happenings  his  selection 
must  consciously  or  unconsciously  follow  some  principle 
or  purpose.  For  a  history  is  not  simply  a  record  of  facts. 
It  is  an  account  of  the  impression  left  upon  the  mind  of 
the  writer  by  his  study  of  the  records  of  facts. 

One  of  the  commonest  impressions  made  upon  the 
examiner  of  the  records  of  facts  in  the  lives  of  past  gen- 
erations is  that  history  is  not  a  mere  mass  of  events. 
The  events  seem  to  compose  currents  or  movements. 
Some  men  of  the  past  appear  to  have  idly  drifted 
with  these  currents;  some  appear  like  those  who  try  to 
dam  and  turn  back  a  river,  while  others  seem  to  so  divert 
or  guide  it  that  the  superficial  observer  thinks  they  created 
the  movement  or  controlled  its  direction.  This  is  simply 
putting  into  a  metaphor  the  impression  that  there  was  a 
certain  similarity  between  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
many  men  living  at  the  same  time  which  suggests  a  com- 

i 


2  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

mon  influence  or  set  of  influences  operating  on  all  of  them. 
A  few  familiar  examples  will  show  that  this  is  an  impres- 
sion made  by  facts : 

After  the  decline  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  West 
and  the  unsuccessful  attempts  of  the  rulers  of  various 
German  immigrant  tribes  to  restore  the  order  and  pros- 
perity it  maintained,  Europe,  west  of  the  Adriatic,  suf- 
fered a  series  of  catastrophes.  The  Northman  plundered 
and  burnt  along  the  Atlantic  coast  from  the  delta  of  the 
Rhine  to  the  Pillars  of  Hercules.  The  Saracen  swept  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean  with  fire  and  sword  and 
savage  hordes  of  Slavs  and  Magyars  pushed  into  the 
domain  of  ancient  civilizations  until  the  broad  strip  of 
desert  they  left  behind  them  almost  met  the  bloody  trail 
of  the  Northman  on  the  West.  The  Empire  of  Charle- 
magne broke  down  under  the  weight  of  these  disasters. 
The  suffering  inhabitants  found  a  shift  for  their  desperate 
condition  in  a  plan  of  defense  and  local  rule,  based  on 
methods  of  land  tenure  and  personal  relations  with  which 
their  ancestors,  whether  Germans  or  Romans,  had  been 
familiar.  The  shift  devised  was  much  the  same  in 
all  localities.  It  spread  and  maintained  itself,  a  certain 
concatenation  between  the  parts  of  society  thus  organized 
arose,  men  formed  a  theory  to  explain  the  origin  and  in- 
ternal relations  of  what  had  grown  up  illogically  under 
the  pressure  of  immediate  need,  and,  from  the  ninth  to  the 
fourteenth  century,  what  is  sometimes  spoken  of  as  the 
feudal  system  exercised  a  great  influence  not  only  upon 
the  acts  but  on  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Europe  of  all  classes. 

So  also  the  student  of  the  sixteenth  century  finds  it 


THE  RENASCENCE  3 

hard  to  avoid  the  impression  of  something  spreading  like 
a  contagion.  For  seven  hundred  years  the  Roman 
Church  organized  with  the  Papacy  at  its  head  had  been 
the  most  powerful  institution  in  Europe.  There  had 
been  sporadic  dissent  with  its  doctrines  or  its  manage- 
ment, protests  like  those  of  the  Lollards,  rejections  of  all 
for  which  it  stood  by  inhabitants  of  certain  localities  like 
that  of  the  Catharists — it  had  fallen  into  terrible  disorder, 
as  during  the  Great  Schism — but  in  the  minds  of  the 
enormous  majority  of  western  Europeans  for  more  than 
twenty  generations  reverence  for  it  had  never  been 
destroyed.  Speaking  broadly,  Europe  had  during  these 
centuries  acknowledged  its  authority  as  the  one  visible 
common  institution  which  actually  survived  the  decay  of 
the  Roman  Empire. 

Within  one  generation  of  the  sixteenth  century,  great 
masses  of  the  people  of  Europe  renounced  its  rule.  And 
religion,  which,  for  seven  hundred  years  had  been  on  the 
whole  a  unifying  force  in  the  history  of  Europe,  became 
an  influence  making  for  disorder.  It  plunged  Europe 
into  a  hundred  years  of  intermittent  wars  whose  chief 
underlying  cause  was  the  unwillingness  of  large  numbers 
of  men  to  accept  the  jurisdiction  of  the  church  genera- 
tions of  their  fathers  had  obeyed. 

So  also  during  the  last  two  generations  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  privilege  and  disability  before  the  law 
were  abolished,  and  the  idea  of  increasing  the  number  of 
those  who  have  a  voice  in  the  affairs  of  government 
found  expression  in  legislation  with  a  rapidity  and  to  an 
extent  seen  at  no  time  before  in  the  history  of  the 
modern  world. 


4  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

These  paragraphs  state  facts  which  are  naturally  sum- 
marized in  metaphorical  expressions.  But  the  feudal 
system  was  never  a  definite  thing  like  the  Papacy  or  the 
English  Monarchy  of  which  you  can  say  at  any  point  in 
time  and  space,  here  it  is.  Nor  can  its  spread  be  traced 
as  we  follow  the  spread  of  a  flood  or  a  tide.  There  was 
no  bacillus  of  the  Reformation  nor  was  that  movement  a 
contagion  either  of  good  or  evil.  Democracy  is  neither 
a  fruitful  harvest  nor  a  noxious  weed  flourishing  more 
and  more  freely  in  European  soil  during  the  last  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  And  yet  it  would  not  be  hard  to 
find  historians  whose  work  has  suffered  from  this  fallacy, 
and  still  more  readers  of  historians  whose  understanding 
of  history  has  been  impaired  by  it. 

For  this  reason  one  of  the  most  acute  and  scholarly 
of  living  French  historical  writers  announces  in  a  pref- 
ace that  he  has  avoided — "abstract  nouns — such  as 
royalty,  the  church,  elements,  tendencies,  which  so 
easily  come  to  seem  mystic  forces.  When  I  have  had 
to  describe  the  acts  or  ideas  of  groups  of  men,  I  have 
always  designated  the  group  either  by  its  national  or 
party  or  class  name,  or  by  a  collective  noun,  such  as  gov- 
ernment, ministry,  clergy — so  that  the  reader  may  be  able 
to  discover,  behind  this  name,  the  men  who  have  acted 
or  thought."  *  The  warning  of  this  practical  protest  is 
a  necessary  and  valuable  one,  but  general  terms  when 
written  and  read  with  intelligence  and  care  are  useful 
because  they  do  record  and  express  a  natural  and  true 
impression  made  on  the  mind  of  the  student  of  the  records 
of  the  past.  It  is  necessary  for  history  to  be  as  accurate, 

1  Histoire  Politique  de  1'Europe  Contemporaine.     Charles  Seignobos. 


THE  RENASCENCE  5 

and  therefore  as  clear  and  explicit  as  possible,  but  it  is 
hard  to  imagine  how  history  can  ever  become  an  exact 
science  and  practically  impossible  to  transfer  to  it  the 
methods  of  the  physical  sciences.  An  over  anxiety  about 
exactitude  has  its  dangers  too.  If  historians  confine 
their  writings  to  descriptions  of  the  programmes  of  polit- 
ical parties,  to  events  which  can  be  described  by  testimony 
acceptable  in  a  court  and  things  of  that  sort,  it  is  to  be 
feared  lest  the  great  mass  of  people  from  whom,  of  course, 
the  future  historians  must  come,  may  say — "well,  in  that 
case  there  seems  no  valid  reason  why  the  race  should  de- 
vote much  time  and  energy  to  history.  If  the  historians 
refuse  to  discuss  the  features  of  the  lives  of  past  genera- 
tions we  want  to  know  about,  what  especial  reason  is  there 
for  any  very  large  supply  of  historians  ?" 

Such  general  terms  as  the  "Spread  of  Feudalism," — the 
"Growth  of  Democracy," — the  "Movement  of  the  Ref- 
ormation," conveniently  connote  facts  and  a  natural  im- 
pression they  make  upon  the  mind  of  every  student.  The 
defense  of  their  use  does  not  make  it  necessary  to  enter 
into  discussions  about  the  relation  of  mental  categories 
to  existence.  Nor  is  it  wise  to  attempt  to  trace  causes 
of  phenomena  too  complex  to  be  explained.  When  the 
attempt  is  made  to  bring  philosophy  and  history  too  close 
together,  in  the  so-called  Philosophy  of  History,  the  lamb 
of  history  generally  lies  down  inside  the  raging  lion  of 
philosophical  discussion.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  history 
is  a  branch  of  literature  and  the  historian  should  not  suf- 
fer from  any  embargo  on  language.  He  may  try  to 
transfer  to  the  mind  of  his  reader  the  impressions  made 


6  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

upon  his  own  mind  by  the  facts  of  the  records,  through 
any  terms  wisely  fitted  for  the  purpose. 

About  thirty  years  ago *  English  writers  on  history, 
literature  and  art  began  to  use  freely  the  word  Renais- 
sance, borrowed  from  French  writers.  It  expressed  and 
still  expresses  an  impression  made  on  the  minds  of  stu- 
dents of  the  records  of  men  from  1350  to  1560,  that  a 
rapid,  progressive  and  similar  change  took  place  in  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  many  men  of  those  generations 
which  wrought  out  noticeable  effects  upon  their  life  and 
institutions.  The  comparative  rapidity  of  these  changes 
in  thought  and  feeling,  the  fact  that  many  felt  them  at 
the  same  time, — that  inhabitants  of  one  country  felt  them 
at  a  period  succeeding  their  first  prevalence  in  another, — 
the  new  forms  in  literature  and  the  plastic  arts  in  which 
these  changes  found  expression,  their  apparent  influence 
in  hastening  the  break  up  of  the  social  institutions  of  past 
generations — these  impressions  made  by  facts  are  natu- 
rally and  simply  expressed  by  the  phrases,  the  movement 
of  the  Awakening — the  New  Birth, — the  Renascence.2 

The  more  one  learns  of  the  life  of  the  generations  be- 
tween the  death  of  Petrarch  and  the  days  of  Elizabeth, 
the  more  useful  do  the  phrases,  "Movement  of  the  Renas- 
cence,"— "Influence  of  the  Renascence,"  seem  to  be,  and 
the  more  difficult  to  define.  It  is  plain  that  there  was  a 
Renascence,  but  very  hard  to  say  what  the  Renascence 
was.  The  changes  that  it  brought  about  or  helped  are 
plain. 

1  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  Article  Renaissance. 

•Usage  is  rapidly  substituting  the  English  word  for  the  French  word.  The 
borrowing  was  a  totally  unnecessary  confession  of  poverty  in  a  language  which 
bad  an  exact  equivalent  then  in  use. 


THE  RENASCENCE  7 

At  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  Thomas  Aquinas, 
the  Universal  Doctor,  was  the  supreme  master  of  Euro- 
pean learning.  In  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century 
Erasmus  was  the  king  of  letters.  Both  devoted  their 
great  industry  and  singular  ability  to  the  discussion  of 
religion  and  the  institutions  and  customs  in  which  re- 
ligious ideas  were  expressed.  The  Summa  Theologise 
and  the  annotated  Greek  Testament  were  both  issued 
with  the  highest  sanction  of  the  Church.  The  difference 
between  them  suggests  the  difference  between  the  worlds 
in  which  Thomas  Aquinas  and  Erasmus  of  Rotterdam 
lived. 

In  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  there  was  built 
in  Paris  to  receive  the  relics  Louis  IX,  King  of  France, 
brought  back  from  the  crusade,  the  Holy  Chapel ;  and  the 
architect  expressed  his  sense  of  beauty  in  an  art  whose 
mode  was  complicated,  suggestive,  mystic.  Five  genera- 
tions later  Brunelleschi  built,  on  commission  of  a  great 
Florentine  merchant,  the  Pazzi  Chapel  by  an  art  express- 
ing itself  precisely,  with  an  almost  logical  order  and  rela- 
tion of  parts,  more  akin  to  mathematics  than  to  metaphys- 
ics. In  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  Cimabue  painted 
for  a  Florentine  church  a  picture  of  the  Madonna;  in 
the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  Michael  Angelo 
painted  on  the  rear  wall  of  the  Sistine  Chapel  a  picture 
of  the  Last  Judgment.  And  five  minutes'  comparison 
of  the  two  pictures  will  make  certain  differences  between 
them  plainer  than  twenty-five  pages  of  description. 

Now  the  difference  between  the  work  of  these  three 
pairs  of  men  is  much  greater  than  the  difference  between 
the  men.  If  Erasmus  had  been  professor  at  Paris  or 


8  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Bologna  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  he  would 
have  written  books  different  from  the  Summa  Theologiae. 
But  they  would  not,  like  his  Praise  of  Folly  and  En- 
chiridion, be  translated  into  the  languages  of  modern 
Europe.  They  would  remain  in  their  original  Latin,  un- 
read save  by  a  few  theologians.  Had  Brunelleschi  been 
called  north  of  the  Alps  to  work  for  Saint  Louis  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  he  would  not  have  built  the  Holy 
Chapel,  but  he  would  have  built  something  as  much  like  it 
as  the  fagade  of  the  cathedrals  of  Siena  and  Orvieto.  Had 
Michael  Angelo  passed  Cimabue  on  the  streets  of  Florence 
every  week,  any  skilled  critic  might  still  have  been  able 
to  tell  their  pictures  apart.  But  as  it  is,  not  even  a  child 
could  confuse  the  work  of  one  with  that  of  the  other. 

And  this  general  and  average  difference  in  modes  of 
literary  and  artistic  expression  between  the  thirteenth 
century  and  the  sixteenth  century  is  matched  by  a  differ- 
ence in  human  institutions  during  the  two  ages. 

A  series  of  rough  maps  of  Europe  indicating  by  dif- 
ferent colours  political  divisions  uses  thirty-six  colours 
for  the  year  1420.  The  map  in  the  same  series  for  the 
year  1563  has  twenty-six  colours,  and  if  we  take  out 
the  leading  states  of  the  German  Empire,  which  in  the 
two  maps  are  unchanged  in  number,  the  count  would  be 
thirty  to  twenty.  One-third  of  the  political  units  of  a 
great  part  of  Europe  had  been  absorbed  into  others  during 
four  generations. 

And  the  change  in  political  conditions  was  greater 
than  can  be  thus  summarized  to  the  eye.  In  the 
Iberian  peninsula,  within  the  Italian  Peninsula,  to 
some  extent  in  England,  what  were  in  effect  loose  ag- 


THE  RENASCENCE  9 

gregations  of  semi-independent  dominions  nominally 
united  into  what  must  be  figured  on  a  chart  as  a  political 
unit,  had  become  unified  and  subjected  to  the  more  efficient 
control  of  a  central  authority.  This  political  change,  rapid- 
ly consolidating  feudal  aggregations  not  effectively  con- 
trolled by  the  authorities  they  acknowledged  into  larger 
or  more  centralized  states,  shows  itself  plainly  in  a  change 
in  the  character  of  the  wars  of  Europe.  Up  to  the  end 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  leaving  out  of  account  the  reli- 
gious movements  of  the  crusades,  the  greater  part  of  the 
killing  for  generation  after  generation  was  done  in 
private  war,  or  at  least  in  factional  war.  Even  the 
Hundred  Years  War,  though  we  think  of  it  now  as  a 
struggle  between  nations,  was,  to  a  large  extent,  a  fac- 
tional, feudal  and  class  contest.  When  the  English  kings 
invaded  France  in  the  fourteenth  century,  they  were  aided 
by  large  numbers  of  Frenchmen,  vassals  of  the  English 
king  or  rebellious  vassals  of  the  French  king.  But  with 
the  French  invasion  of  Italy  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century  begins  a  long  series  of  battles,  really  between 
dynasties  but  apparently  between  nations — struggles  in 
which  the  leaders  appealed  to  their  supporters  to  defend 
against  the  glory  and  interest  of  foreigners,  the  glory  and 
interest  of  those  who  spoke  or  at  least  read  the  same 
tongue. 

A  great  economic  change  had  also  taken  place.  The 
unique  importance  of  land  as  the  source  of  wealth  and 
power  had  decreased.  Men  could  gain  comfort  or  riches 
by  making  things  to  sell  or  trading  the  products  of  one 
country  for  those  of  another.  The  use  of  money  had  re- 
placed barter  in  all  but  primitive  transactions  and  a  system 


io  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

of  credit  had  begun  to  make  up  for  the  scarcity  of  money. 

This  economic  change  had  helped  to  alter  the  balance  of 
society.  From  the  tenth  to  the  thirteenth  century  the 
land  holder,  because  he  was  either  vassal  or  overlord,  and 
often  he  was  both,  must  be  a  fighter.  A  woman  did  not 
freely  inherit  fiefs,  and  the  knight,  holder  of  enough  land 
to  support  a  horse,  became  the  power  in  the  world.  But 
before  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  spears 
and  clubs  of  burghers  had  more  than  once  broken  the 
charge  of  the  chivalry — the  professional  warriors  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  And  successful  armies  were  made  up 
not  of  vassals,  unapt  for  discipline,  anxious  to  get  home, 
but  of  men  paid  to  stay  with  the  standard.  Knighthood 
became  an  ornamental  title  rather  than  the  symbol  of  a 
necessary  activity.  The  burgher  who  lived  within  the 
walls  of  a  town  and  tilled  no  land,  but  who  could  fight 
himself  and  whose  money  could  hire  other  fighters,  took 
his  place  beside  the  knight  as  a  figure  in  society.  Some 
attention  must  be  paid  to  his  feelings  and  interests.  In 
the  valley  of  the  Po  and  the  slopes  of  the  northern  Apen- 
nines, men  who  traded  themselves  and  whose  ancestors 
had  been  traders  became  rulers  of  states  anti  rivalled  in 
power  and  magnificence  the  proudest  feudal  families  of 
the  North. 

The  education  of  the  world  had  changed.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  fourteenth  century,  though  there  were 
students  at  the  University  who  did  not  expect  to  enter  the 
service  of  the  Church,  the  instruction  was  in  the  hands  of 
clergymen  and  to  a  great  extent  in  the  hands  of  members 
of  monastic  orders.  At  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth 
century  the  most  celebrated  men  in  the  world  of  learning 


THE  RENASCENCE  n 

were  neither  clegymen  nor  members  of  monastic  orders. 
A  new  figure,  the  humanist,  had  taken  his  place  alongside 
the  monk  and  was  waging  with  him  a  fierce  and  mani- 
festly successful  battle  to  substitute  for  the  "Old  Learning 
of  the  Schoolmen,"  the  "New  Learning." 

Those  who  had  the  chance  to  do  what  they  liked  in  the 
world,  the  nobles  and  wealthy  burghers — had  during  the 
fifteenth  century  changed  their  minds  about  education. 
In  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century  the  Earl  of  Arundel 
spoke  to  the  Pope  of  himself  and  his  friends  as  illiterate 
laymen.  Men  of  the  sword  and  horse  took  no  shame  for 
not  knowing  what  belonged  only  to  men  of  book  and  pen. 
That  changed  somewhat  in  the  next  hundred  years. 
Young  nobles  began  to  enter  the  Universities.  But  noble 
society  did  not  become  intellectual.  In  the  end  of  the 
fourteenth  century  John  Froissart,  poet,  priest,  traveller, 
courtier,  wrote  a  book  for  "all  noble  and  valiant  persons." 
He  and  those  to  whom  he  read  what  he  wrote  thought, 
and,  as  the  event  showed,  wisely  thought,  "it  would  in 
times  to  come  be  more  sought  after  than  any  other."  He 
could  safely  assume  in  it  that  the  men  and  women  of  the 
English  or  French  courts  and  the  castles  of  minor  princes 
would  care  for  nothing  but  war,  love  and  hunting.  But 
during  the  fifteenth  century  the  society  of  courts  changed. 
The  old  learning  taught  by  the  monks  had  never  appealed 
very  strongly  to  the  nobles.  The  new  learning  of  the 
humanists  captivated  them.  In  the  beginning  of  the 
sixteenth  century  Count  Baldassare  Castiglione  repeated 
the  attempt  made  by  the  Hainault  priest  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  before  to  write  a  book  for  noble  persons. 
He  was  equally  successful.  His  "Courier"  was  read 


12  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

everywhere  and  soon  translated  into  the  chief  lan- 
guages of  Europe.  It  pictures  a  society  informed  and 
cultured,  women  of  wit  and  education,  men  who  have 
joined  the  clerk  to  the  knight  and  hold  the  pleasures  of  the 
mind  as  dear  as  the  hunt  and  the  tournament. 

All  these  changes  in  the  motives  of  learning  and  the 
forms  of  literature  and  art;  in  political  institutions,  in 
social  conditions,  and  personal  ideals,  seem  to  be  related 
to  a  change  in  methods  of  thought  and  habits  of  feeling 
promoted  by  a  new  ideal  of  education  and  life.  That 
new  ideal  began  to  find  numbers  of  adherents  in  Italy  at 
the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century.  At  the  close  of 
the  century  it  spread  across  the  Alps  and  during  the  next 
hundred  years  deeply  affected  the  social,  political, 
scholarly  and  artistic  life  of  all  nations.  In  the  works  of 
the  Italian  man  of  letters,  Petrarch,  who  died  in  1374, 
this  ideal  of  education  and  life  can  be  seen  clearly  ex- 
pressed and  sharply  defined  from  the  scholastic  ideal  of 
education  and  life,  all  but  absolutely  dominant  thirty  years 
before  his  birth. 

And  it  would  appear  that  if  you  are  to  give  any  definite 
meaning  to  the  vague  term  Renascence,  if  you  are  to 
equate  your  x,  you  must  make  the  Renascence  equivalent 
to  the  new  ideal  of  education  and  life  suggested  by  Pe- 
trarch and  the  humanists  and  expressed  in  the  plastic  arts 
in  Italy  during  the  fifteenth  century.  The  movement  of 
the  Renascence  is  the  spread  of  that  ideal,  with  the  conse- 
quent, or  at  least  contemporaneous,  weakening  of  the 
power  of  the  ideas  of  society  and  government  and  religion 
which  had  prevailed  during  the  middle  ages  under  the 
influence  of  feudalism  and  scholasticism.  Feudalism, 


THE  RENASCENCE  13 

scholasticism  and  the  mediaeval  church  were  indeed  de- 
caying before  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Economic 
causes,  intellectual  criticism,  their  own  corruption  were 
weakening  their  power,  but  the  Renascence  spreading 
from  Italy  gave  them  a  death  blow — the  new  ideal  of 
education  and  view  of  life  separate  modern  Europe  from 
mediaeval  Europe. 

To  define  this  ideal  by  positive  and  abstract  terms  is 
difficult.  Petrarch,  in  whose  works  we  first  find  it 
clearly  though  not  always  explicitly  set  forth,  presented 
it  in  opposition  to  the  prevailing  scholastic  ideal.  He 
denied  that  teachers  ought  to  have  most  in  view  the  use- 
fulness of  knowledge  and  training  their  scholars  to  earn 
a  living  in  the  world.  He  said  the  first  object  of  educa- 
tion was  to  lead  men  to  love  and  seek  truth  for  its  own 
sake.  Culture  was  higher  than  knowledge,  skilled  work- 
men could  not  repay  the  world  for  the  lack  of  wise  men. 

He  wanted  a  culture,  broad,  liberal,  humane,  to  replace 
the  narrow  technical  training  of  the  schools.  Therefore, 
he  quarrelled  with  the  methods  of  the  scholastic  learning 
as  well  as  with  its  purpose.  He  asserted  that  literature 
was  a  fuller  reflex  and  a  better  measure  of  life  than  logic ; 
that  poetry  and  rhetoric  would  set  free  the  mind  quicker 
than  metaphysics  and  theology;  that  the  languages  con- 
taining the  records  of  the  civilizations  of  Greece  and 
Rome  were  better  instruments  of  training  than  disputa- 
tions about  entities  which  had  never  existed  except  in  the 
minds  of  the  disputants. 

And  when  the  reason  of  the  scholar  was  thus  set  free 
from  prejudice  and  ignorance,  he  wanted  it  relieved  of 
the  weight  of  authority.  He  said  boys  should  be  taught 


14  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  thoughts  of  other  men  in  order  that  they  might  learn 
to  think  for  themselves.  In  a  treatise  "Concerning  his 
own  Ignorance  and  That  of  Many  Others,"  he  dared  to 
assert  that  Aristotle  did  not  know  everything.  He  de- 
clined to  admit  that  the  works  of  Peter  Lombard,  of  Ar- 
istotle, of  Thomas  Aquinas  and  other  men,  however 
great,  had  circumscribed  the  field  of  knowledge,  said  the 
best  possible  word,  given  the  final  judgment,  on  every 
topic  worthy  of  serious  attention.  Therefore,  he  proposed 
to  cease  studying  commentators,  to  break  through  them 
in  every  direction  and  study  subjects.  He  reasserted  the 
right  of  personal  judgment  and  made  his  disciples  con- 
scious that  they  were  personalities  and  not  members  of  a 
class, — whether  in  the  University  or  the  larger  school  of 
life. 

Such  an  ideal  of  education  and  the  view  of  life  it  as- 
sumed, was  a  disintegrating  influence  in  mediaeval  so- 
ciety. If  a  noble  family  was  influenced  by  it  for  any  time 
it  came  to  pass  that  the  son,  or  at  least  the  grandson,  of 
the  man  who  read  Froissart,  preferred  Castiglione.  And 
this  change  in  literary  taste  was  an  index  of  a  change  of 
thought,  feeling,  desire  and  habit.  Social  customs,  polit- 
ical arrangements,  civil  and  ecclesiastical  institutions,  com- 
mon opinions,  showed  the  influence  of  such  changes. 

To  set  forth  this  ideal  of  education  and  this  view  of 
life  so  pregnant  with  revolutionary  influence,  demanded 
the  power  of  marked  originality  in  Petrarch.  And  yet,  of 
course,  it  was  not  new,  nor  did  the  movement  we  may  date 
from  him  begin  with  him.  History  cannot  be  cut  off  into 
lengths  as  a  stick  of  wood  is  cut  with  an  axe  and  the 
pieces  labeled  "Dark  Ages,"  "Middle  Ages,"  "Age  of  the 


THE  RENASCENCE  15 

Renascence,"  "Age  of  the  Reformation."  Neither  do 
men  launch  "movements"  as  a  ship  is  built  in  the  yards 
and  launched  from  the  ways.  Other  men  before  Petrarch 
had  uttered  similar  protests.  A  hundred  years  before  he 
was  born  Abelard  had  used  the  methods  of  the  schools  to 
question  the  accepted  conclusions  of  the  schoolmen.  And 
before  Abelard  the  school  of  Chartres  was  leading  its  pu- 
pils to  spend  more  time  on  Cicero  and  Virgil  than  on  dis- 
putes over  substance  and  accidents.  There  was  a  Re- 
nascence before  the  Renascence  more  or  less  plainly  re- 
corded in  the  works  of  some  French  artists  and  the  writ- 
ings of  some  French  teachers.  But  these  men  were 
less  certain  of  their  aims — their  influence  was  less  wide- 
spread and  effective  than  that  of  Petrarch  and  his 
disciples. 

It  may  be  that  Petrarch  only  transmitted  and 
increased  their  impulse  as  they  may  have  transmit- 
ted and  increased  the  lesser  impulse  of  predecessors. 
It  may  be  that  if  we  could  see  history  entirely  we  should 
find  all  processes  continuous  and  that  the  source  of  spir- 
itual energy  was  constant  under  all  changes  of  form.  If 
any  man  chooses  to  think  that,  he  is  going  into  a  domain 
where  profitable  argument  is  impossible  for  lack  of  data. 
But,  however  history  might  appear  if  seen  by  omniscience, 
to  men  it  seems  that  certain  individuals  have  been  inde- 
pendent sources  of  power  and  influence.  During  the  life 
of  some  generations  it  does  look  as  if  hidden  streams  had 
suddenly  broken  out  to  the  light  of  day  or  currents  begun 
to  flow  with  much  greater  rapidity.  And  in  this  sense  it 
is  possible  for  a  wise  man  to  speak  of  Petrarch  as  the  fa- 


16  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ther  of  the  Renascence  and  to  say  that  it  began  in  Italy  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  fourteenth  century. 

The  Renascence  was  not  equivalent  to  the  revival  of  the 
influence  of  classic  antiquity.  Nowhere  has  the  undue  lik- 
ing of  writers  on  history  for  memorable,  sharp  and  pic- 
turesque statements  made  more  plain  its  evil  effects  upon 
popular  conceptions  than  in  this  matter.  Large  num- 
bers of  educated  people  believe  that  the  Renascence  be- 
gan with  the  fall  of  Constantinople,  which  drove  a 
crowd  of  Greek  teachers  into  Italy  and  so  revived  the 
knowledge  of  the  classic  world — mother  of  arts,  literature 
and  learning.  But  Petrarch,  Boccaccio,  Salutato,  Marsigli, 
Niccolo  de'  Niccoli,  Leonardo  Bruni,  Traversari,  Vit- 
torino  da  Feltre  and  many  other  furtherers  of  the  Renas- 
cence were  dead  before  Constantinople  fell.  The  typical 
humanists  Bracciolini  and  Filelfo  were  old  men  when 
the  Turkish  army  moved  to  the  fatal  assault  in  1453 ;  and 
six  years  before,  the  Renascence  incarnate  in  the  person  of 
Nicholas  V.  had  mounted  the  throne  of  the  Papacy. 

The  truth  is  that  the  influence  of  classic  antiquity  in 
the  art,  the  language  and  the  literature  of  Rome  and 
Greece  was  only  the  means  of  accomplishing  the  Renas- 
cence ideal.  It  became  the  symbol  of  its  advocates  against 
the  "Old  Learning"  and  the  sign  of  their  victories,  but  the 
Renascence  did  not  mean  simply  better  Latin  and  the  read- 
ing of  Greek,  the  influence  of  the  Pantheon  and  the  study 
of  the  Roman  antiques  in  the  gardens  and  cabinets  of 
Lorenzo  de'  Medici.  When  Stephen  Vaughan  was  trav- 
elling in  the  Netherlands  on  business  for  Thomas  Crom- 
well, a  leading  London  lawyer  much  given  to  hospitality, 
it  was  natural  that  he  should  advise  his  employer  to 


THE  RENASCENCE  17 

buy  a  large  dining  table  he  saw  in  Antwerp;  for 
it  was  decorated  with  carved  inscriptions  in  Latin, 
Greek  and  Hebrew.1  Thomas  Cromwell  had  spent  sev- 
eral years  in  Italy  and  imbibed  the  spirit  of  the  Renas- 
cence. His  attitude  was  prophetic  of  the  part  he  was  to 
play  as  Vicar  of  the  King  for  ecclesiastical  affairs  and 
Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Cambridge  in  replacing 
men  of  the  "Old  Learning"  by  men  of  the  "New  Learn- 
ing." There  came  to  his  house  a  number  of  young  stu- 
dents and  writers  who  had  either  visited  Italian  Univer- 
sities or  studied  under  men  educated  in  Italy,  and  when 
Vaughan  saw  a  table  thus  symbolically  decorated  he  said 
to  himself — "There  is  the  very  thing  for  the  dining-room 
of  Cromwell's  house."  But  this  thought  did  not  arise 
because  Cromwell  had  any  special  interest  in  linguistic 
studies.  The  London  lawyer  knew  only  one  of  the  three 
languages  and  was  not  particularly  skilful  in  using  that. 
Such  a  table  seemed  appropriate  for  Cromwell's  house 
because  he  and  his  friends  felt  in  the  words  of  Reginald 
Pole,  another  Englishman,  who,  during  many  years'  study 
at  Padua  had  been  affected  by  the  New  Learning,  though 
he  disliked  it — "in  these  three  tongues,  Greek,  Latin,  He- 
brew, all  liberal  culture  is  contained." 

When  some  students  returned  from  Italy  to  Germany, 
moved  all  younger  Germany  to  Homeric  laughter  by  the 
parody  of  "The  Letters  of  Obscure  Men,"  they  did  not 
do  it  simply  to  make  fun  of  scholastic  Latin.  They  used 
the  weapon  of  satire  in  defense  of  John  Reuchlin,  the 
leader  of  the  progressive  scholarship  of  Germany,  threat- 
ened with  the  stake  by  the  scholastics  of  Cologne 

1  Letters  and  papers  Henry  VJH,  Vol.  IV,  Part  2,  6860. 


i8  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

because  he  advised  the  Emperor  Maximilian  not  to 
permit  the  destruction  of  all  Hebrew  literature  outside  of 
the  Bible.  They  were  interested  in  something  far  more 
vital  than  good  grammar  and  classic  diction.  They  were 
defending  against  obscurantism  clad  in  the  garb  of  zeal 
for  religion,  the  right  of  free  inquiry,  which  is  the  breath 
of  true  learning  and  one  of  the  conditions  of  a  high  civil- 
ization. 

To  suppose  that  the  Renascence  was  nothing  more  than 
the  stronger  revival  of  the  influence  of  classic  antiquity,  is 
to  confuse  the  means  of  the  men  who  shared  and  spread 
its  ideal  with  their  end.  Aretino,  a  typical  product  of  the 
Italian  Renascence  at  its  height, — who,  judged  by  social 
and  financial  standards,  was  the  most  successful  of  all  the 
professional  humanists  of  his  day — could  not  read  Latin 
at  all. 

The  end  of  the  men  of  the  Italian  Renascence  was  a 
broader  and  more  human  culture  of  the  mind,  their  favour- 
ite means  the  study  of  classic  antiquity,  but  neither  their 
means  nor  their  end  was  the  source  of  the  impulse  which 
moved  them.  Boccaccio  saw  his  forerunner  in  Dante,  a 
man  trained  in  the  "Old  Learning,"  and  looking  at  the 
universe  under  its  rubrics.  The  promise  and  the  potency 
of  the  development  of  art  at  Florence  is  in  Giotto,  who  did 
not  understand  perspective  and  could  not  model 
his  figures.  When  there  arose  in  Italy  generations  of 
handlers  of  brush  and  chisel  who  had  a  new  view 
of  the  beauty  of  this  world  we  live  in,  they  found  a  new 
technique.  Having  something  to  say  they  worked  out  a 
new  language.  They  did  it  with  the  help  of  the  marbles 
and  bronzes  of  Greece  and  Rome  in  the  society  of  men 


THE  RENASCENCE  19 

who  were  re-studying  their  literatures.  But  the  new  tech- 
nique did  not  give  them  their  ideas.  Generations  of  Ital- 
ians had  seen  the  ruins  and  broken  statues  of  the  Romans 
before  the  time  came  when  all  artists  were  expected  to 
have  learned  what  they  taught.  It  was  the  seeing  eye  and 
the  hearing  ear  and  the  understanding  mind  among  the 
men  of  the  fifteenth  century  which  made  these  dead  things 
produce  new  life.  A  native  impulse,  a  revival  of  the  love 
of  truth  and  beauty,  making  men  more  sensitive  to  the 
world  around  them  and  quicker  to  respond  to  its  glories  of 
form  and  colour  with  vivid  emotions  of  pleasure,  sought 
new  and  better  means  of  expression.  It  seized  upon  classic 
forms  and  moulded  them  to  its  purpose,  and  they  became 
the  carriers  of  the  generous  contagion  of  the  new  enthu- 
siasm for  the  beautiful.  But  that  impulse  would  have 
found  some  means  of  expression  if  all  the  classic  remains 
in  Italy  had  dissolved  into  dust.  Even  as  during  the  fif- 
teenth century  the  van  Eycks  of  Flanders  and  their  fol- 
lowers learned  to  make  more  beautiful  pictures  by  devel- 
oping the  mediaeval  technique. 

In  other  words,  men  like  Petrarch  and  Masaccio  pre- 
ferred a  new  ideal  of  education  and  form  of  expression 
because  they  had  a  new  and  more  vivid  view  of  the  world 
and  of  life  in  it.  Their  ideal  spread  because  it  found  men 
of  similar  feelings,  thoughts,  desires,  or  at  least,  men  in 
whom  such  feelings,  thoughts  and  desires  were  dormant 
and  ready  to  be  wakened.  The  reason  why  the  world 
changed  as  much  as  it  did  between  the  death  of  Petrarch 
and  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  was  because  generations  grew 
up  who  were  different  from  their  forefathers.  If  we  are 


20  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

to  use  the  word  Renascence  intelligently,  we  must  always 
see  behind  it  the  men  of  the  Renascence. 

Here  we  must  tread  carefully  for  we  are  again  on  the 
very  border  of  the  debatable  ground  of  the  Philosophy  of 
History.  Let  us  by  all  means  steer  clear  of  it.  We  may 
escape  wasting  time  in  repeating  the  disputes  of  genera- 
tions of  metaphysical  speculators,  in  this  way.  Whether 
it  be  true  that  man  helps  to  make  the  history  of  his  own 
age  or  whether  it  is  true  that  he  is  made  by  it,  we  act  as 
if  it  were  true  that  he  helps  to  make  it.  If  we  did  not 
assume  this,  all  political  discussion,  scholarly  argument  or 
religious  activity, — everything  but  commerce  and  the  arts, 
would  cease.  There  would  be  no  use  in  an  intelligent  man 
doing  anything  but  adjust  himself  to  machinery  which 
could  not  be  changed.  If  we  thought  all  problems  were 
working  themselves  out  by  formulae  where  human  choice 
was  not  a  chief  factor,  it  would  be  useless  to  try  to  take 
a  hand  in  the  solution. 

We  live  as  if  we  were  not  mere  straws  in  the  rushing 
tides  of  history, — as  if  men  made  society  rather  than  as 
if  society  made  men.  And  it  seems  reasonable  to  look  at 
past  generations  from  the  point  of  view  we  take  to  look  at 
our  own — to  think  of  dead  men  as  influenced  by  inherit- 
ance and  circumstance,  as  limited  by  opportunity,  but  as 
making  by  their  actions  the  inheritance  and  circumstance 
of  coming  generations.  Practically  we  assume  that  per- 
sonality is  a  chief  factor  in  the  life  of  our  own  day — we 
should  have  assumed  it  had  we  lived  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury ;  why  is  it  not  wise  to  assume  it  when  we  try  to  find 
out  what  the  life  of  the  sixteenth  century  was  like? 


THE  RENASCENCE  21 

For  there  was  no  time  when  personality  was  a  stronger 
factor  in  history  than  during  the  age  of  the  Renascence. 
The  mediaeval  man,  the  average  man  who  lived  during 
the  thirteenth  century,  instinctively  thought  of  himself  as 
belonging  to  a  class.  He  was  serf  or  noble,  burgher  or 
ecclesiastic.  It  was  taken  for  granted  that  a  burgher  would 
act  differently  from  a  knight,  that  a  serf  should  be  treated 
differently  from  an  ecclesiastic.  Every  man's  chances  and 
duties  were  limited  not  only  by  circumstances  and  abil- 
ities but  by  obligations  joining  him  to  his  fellows  in  every 
direction,  by  some  inherited  right  or  traditional  author- 
ity of  another  man.  The  necessities  of  the  barbarous  con- 
dition of  society  which  had  forced  feudalism  to  become 
a  method  of  government,  had  made  the  social  unit  not 
a  man  or  a  family  but  the  community.  And  the  schoolmen 
had  formed  a  theoretical  description  of  the  feudal  system, 
which  pictured  society  as  a  single  great  organization, 
ruled  in  ascending  stages  by  a  civil  hierarchy  of  overlords, 
with  every  detail  of  life  guided  and  directed  by  the  spirit- 
ual hierarchy  of  the  clergy.  It  is  true  that  feudal  life  did 
not  correspond  with  this  theory.  Feudalism  left  the  way 
open  for  passionate  assertions  of  a  savage  sense  of  indi- 
viduality. Against  general  considerations  of  justice  and 
the  commonwealth,  men  were  constantly  asserting  their 
rights  by  private,  that  is  customary,  local  law,  or  avenging 
their  pride  by  private  war  where  no  man  thought  it 
shameful  to  join  robbery  and  arson  to  killing.  But  me- 
diaeval society,  though  it  left  a  chance  for  savage  asser- 
tions of  individuality  and  fostered  in  the  owners  of  castles 
a  farouche  unsocial  pride,  lacked  the  mobility  and  freedom 
needed  to  develop  true  individuality.  If  it  had  not  been 


22  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

for  the  democratizing  influence  of  the  church,  preaching 
universal  ideals  of  justice  and  mercy  and  occasionally 
choosing  for  its  head  a  man  of  humblest  origin,  European 
society  might  have  hardened  into  a  system  of  caste. 

To  give  a  man  a  humane  training  instead  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  art  of  his  class,  to  free  the  spirit  from  the 
habit  of  accepting  traditional  authority  without  question, 
was  to  broaden  his  horizon  and  to  awaken  in  him  the 
critical  faculty,  to  make  him  more  complex  and  independ- 
ent. The  consciousness  of  the  ego  increased,  ambition 
was  stronger  and  more  diffused,  activities  became  multi- 
plied, men  began  to  find  keener  pleasure  in  a  greater  va- 
riety of  objects.  The  personalities  of  men  counted  for 
more.  And  because  they  had  a  clearer  and  wider  view  of 
the  world  they  became  more  conscious  of  self.  Welt- 
schmerz,  the  fruit  of  chagrin,  or  a  self-centred  habit  of 
mind,  began  to  appear  in  literature.  To  the  wonder  of 
men  north  of  the  Alps,  who  had  not  felt  the  influence  of 
the  Renascence,  able  bastards  gained  or  inherited  political 
power,  displacing  feebler  legitimate  heirs.  Many-sided 
personalities  began  to  appear — artists  who  were  poets, 
architects,  sculptors,  musicians,  painters;  rulers  of  states 
who  were  financiers,  scholars,  writers  and  connoisseurs 
of  art.  Feudal  pride  secure  in  its  own  sense  of  superior- 
ity, seeking  only  the  applause  of  its  peers,  became  per- 
sonal pride  fed  by  a  mordant  craving  for  praise  that 
would  give  a  sense  of  distinction  in  the  eyes  of  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men. 

The  rapid  creation  of  a  new  class  of  pictures  marks  the 
increased  importance  of  the  individual  and  the  spread  of 
the  sense  of  personality.  At  the  close  of  the  fifteenth 


THE  RENASCENCE  23 

century  artists  everywhere  began  to  paint  great  numbers 
of  portraits,  not  put  into  corners  of  religious  or  historical 
works,  not  monumental  effigies  on  tombs,  but  distinct 
records  of  personality  made  for  their  own  sake.  Portraits 
which  up  to  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  are  rare 
outside  of  Italy  suddenly  become  very  numerous.  We  do 
not  know  what  many  of  the  great  men  of  mediaeval  times 
looked  like,  but  we  have  portraits  of  all  the  leaders  of 
thought  and  action  of  the  early  sixteenth  century.  And 
the  more  noted  were  painted  again  and  again. 

There  is  therefore  a  reason  for  calling  this  book 
Renascence  Portraits,  and  some  grounds  for  believing  that 
it  might  help  a  reader  to  a  clearer  understanding  of  the 
Renascence  if  I  could  succeed  in  showing  him  the  char- 
acter and  life  of  three  men  who  felt  its  influence,  The 
German  Emperor,  Maximilian  I ;  the  English  Chief  Min- 
ister, Thomas  Cromwell;  and  the  Venetian  Litterateur, 
Pietro  Aretino. 

The  Renascence  was  firmly  established  in  Italy  before 
it  had  much  influence  in  other  lands.  Men  trained  accord- 
ing to  the  new  ideal  of  education  were  the  leaders  of  po- 
lite society;  all  painters,  sculptors  and  architects  were 
following  the  methods  of  the  new  art,  before  the  Renas- 
cence crossed  the  Alps.  It  spread  first  to  Germany.  For 
Germany  was  closer  to  Italy  than  any  other  part  of 
Europe.  In  Germany  great  ecclesiastics  were  still  what 
they  had  elsewhere  ceased  to  be,  political  rulers.  The 
Empire  did  not  interrupt  the  connection  of  the  episcopal 
sees  with  Rome  as  did  the  crowns  of  France,  Spain  or 
England.  All  central  Europe  from  the  Eider  to  the  Tiber 
was  nominally  under  one  supreme  ruler, — the  Emperor  of 


24  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  Holy  Roman  Empire  of  the  German  Nation,  who  was 
elected  on  the  banks  of  the  Rhine  but  crowned  by  the 
Pope  at  Rome.  The  trade  over  the  Brenner  Pass  linked 
together  the  Baltic  and  the  Adriatic.  Germany  was  in 
the  fourteenth  century  waking  to  new  intellectual  life. 
And  the  commerce  of  thought  followed  the  roads  of  trade. 
Students  poured  over  the  Alps  into  Italy.  They  brought 
back  with  them  the  New  Learning  and  within  a  genera- 
tion it  produced  most  marked  results.  Luther  and  Zwing- 
li,  under  whose  lead  the  bulk  of  German-speaking  peo- 
ples broke  from  the  church  of  their  fathers,  would  prob- 
ably have  perished  at  the  stake  but  for  the  critical  and 
independent  spirit  roused  in  the  educated  young  men  of 
the  German  Empire  by  the  "New  Learning." 

Maximilian  I  died  when  these  two  great  schisms,  the 
first  of  a  series  which  were  to  carry  all  Teutonic  Europe 
out  of  the  unity  of  Christendom,  were  scarcely  begun. 
But  it  is  easy  to  see  that  his  attitude  toward  it  would 
not  have  differed  from  that  of  his  grandson  and 
successor  who  regarded  it  as  dangerous  to  church  and 
state.  Maximilian  was  sincerely  religious.  But  he  was 
not  unwilling  to  question  customary  beliefs,  and  the  plan 
he  spoke  of  as  his  intention  to  become  "both  Pope  and 
Kaiser,"  whatever  it  may  have  been,  shows  that  he  had  no 
over-mastering  reverence  for  the  traditional  form  of  the 
church.  He  thought  a  reformation  conducted  by  him- 
self would  be  safe,  for  it  would  leave  the  Hapsburg  dy- 
nasty, where  God  had  placed  it,  as  the  supreme  arbiter 
of  the  highest  destinies  of  the  world.  But  a  reform  which 
originated  from  below — which  found  the  bulk  of  its  ad- 
herents in  those  classes  whose  interests  God  had  commit- 


THE  RENASCENCE  25 

ted  to  him — whose  action  gave  the  centre  of  the  world's 
stage  to  someone  else  beside  himself,  left  him  cold.  As 
soon  as  its  leaders  should  begin  to  cross  his  plans  they 
would  stir  a  latent  opposition  in  his  mind  into  the  rapid 
development  of  the  conviction  that  they  were  enemies  of 
truth  and  law. 

For  it  was  the  same  dominant  desire  of  Maximilian 
which  in  his  age  made  him  cold  and  hostile  to  the  first  pro- 
tests of  the  Lutheran  Reformation,  that  made  him  eagerly 
accept  in  his  youth  the  first  influences  of  the  Renascence. 
Maximilian  saw  in  the  Renascence  a  new  ornament  for 
the  house  of  Hapsburg — in  its  art  and  literature  loud 
trumpets  to  proclaim  his  glory  to  posterity. 

In  this  Maximilian  did  not  differ  essentially  from  the 
votaries  of  the  Renascence  in  Italy  where  it  had  reached 
its  full  power.  It  is  not  easy  to  find  among  Italian  pa- 
trons, writers  and  artists  of  the  sixteenth  century  any 
large  number  of  men  who  loved  art  for  art's  sake.  That 
society  was  then  full  of  such  men  is  a  conclusion  drawn 
by  some  advocates  of  a  nineteenth  century  theory  from 
a  narrow  study  of  the  work  of  a  few  Renascence  artists, 
and  not  from  all  the  manifestations  of  their  characters  and 
the  characters  of  their  contemporaries.  The  rulers  of  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  in  Italy,  all  to  some  ex- 
tent tyrants  in  the  classic  sense,  had  a  full  understanding 
of  how  much  art  was  worth  to  them.  Keen  men  of  the 
world,  they  knew  that,  among  a  population  lacking  in 
moral  simplicity,  magnificence  breeds  respect.  Pageantry 
helps  to  console  a  generation  unworthy  of  liberty  for  the 
loss  of  it ;  even  as  new  toys  divert  the  grief  of  children. 
Some  of  them,  it  is  true,  gratified  their  own  tastes,  but 


26  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

in  all  they  spent  they  found  their  account.  And  arrears 
were  balanced  by  the  asset  of  the  tribute  of  fame  which 
future  generations  would  pay  at  their  tombs. 

Maximilian  was  like  them  in  this.  But  he  was  unlike 
them  in  the  fact  that  he  never  understood  what  he 
adopted.  He  never  assimilated  the  Renascence  and  it 
never  changed  him  from  a  mediaeval  into  a  modern  man. 
The  works  he  wrote  and  the  monuments  he  planned  are 
a  standing  proof  that  his  taste  was  undiscriminating.  He 
never  could  free  his  mind  from  the  social  and  political 
ideas  of  the  middle  ages.  And  when  he  modified  them,  it 
was  not  by  observing  facts  but  by  adopting  the  fantastic 
conceptions  of  servile  humanists  about  the  relation  of 
his  power  to  that  of  the  Caesars.  It  is  very  doubtful 
whether  Maximilian  was  any  more  loyal  in  his  diplomacy 
than  his  rivals ;  but  it  is  certain  that  he  was  less  success- 
ful. His  schemes  seldom  failed  to  allow  their  victim  to  es- 
cape from  the  trap.  A  thing  planned  seemed  to  him  done. 
He  arranged  men  in  day  dreams,  he  did  not  think  what 
living  men  would  probably  do.  Hence,  Machiavelli,  who 
logically  arranged,  and  by  logically  arranging  exagger- 
ated, the  evils  of  the  general  political  practice  of  his  day, 
regarded  Maximilian  as  a  sort  of  living  fossil  inept  at 
statecraft,  entirely  unable  to  take  the  world  as  it  was 
around  him. 

Of  the  political  ideal  which  relieves  the  sordid  selfish- 
ness of  Machiavelli's  ideal  of  royal  politics,  Maximilian 
had  no  conception.  For  Machiavelli  did  more  than  dis- 
play in  logical  arrangement  the  practical  methods  of 
statesmen  of  the  Renascence.  He  sketched  the  ideal  which 
they  followed — the  ideal  of  unified  nations  safe  and 


THE  RENASCENCE  27 

prosperous  under  wise  and  skilful  rulers.  That  ideal  was 
in  the  air  of  Germany  even  more  than  in  the  air  of  Italy. 
But  Maximilian  never  felt  its  power.  Patriotism  in  its 
modern  sense  would  have  been  a  meaningless  word  to 
him,  and  he  could  never  conceive  the  conditions  of  royal 
greatness  from  the  modern  point  of  view.  A  chance  to 
promote  the  unity  of  Germany  seemed  to  him  of  little 
importance  compared  to  a  raid  into  Picardy  or  the  oppor- 
tunity of  taking  a  small  town  in  Guelders.  Maximilian 
simply  put  on  the  Renascence  as  he  might  exchange  an 
armor  worn  by  one  of  his  house  fighting  the  Swiss  at 
Sempach,  for  a  new  suit  from  Brescia  or  Milan. 

Thomas  Cromwell  on  the  other  hand  understood  the 
spirit  and  ideals  of  the  Renascence  and  assimilated  them. 
No  family  traditions  obscured  his  view  of  the  world  as 
it  was.  He  readily  accepted  the  idea  that  a  man  ought 
to  look  at  it  with  his  own  eyes  and  not  with  the  eyes  of 
a  dead  philosopher.  Any  ideals  he  might  follow  never 
made  him  oblivious  of  facts.  Henry  VIII  was  destroy- 
ing the  ancient  balance  of  the  mediaeval  monarchy  and 
trying  to  base  a  great  throne  on  a  united  nation.  He 
was  calling  to  his  service  men  who  before  had  little  ca- 
reer open  to  them  in  statecraft :  the  sons  of  country  gen- 
tlemen and  burghers.  Cromwell  followed  the  open  road 
to  service  and  fortune.  He  had  his  ambitions,  but  he  also 
had  his  ideals.  His  ambitions  were  power  won  by  in- 
tellectual ability,  not  by  arms;  fortune  and  distinction 
adorned  by  literature  and  art.  He  was  not  a  scholar  and 
too  busy  with  practical  affairs  to  write  anything  but  let- 
ters and  state  papers.  But  he  modelled  his  leisure  hours 
after  the  society  described  in  The  Courtier. 


28  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

And  like  his  ambition,  his  political  ideals  were  formed 
by  the  Renascence.  The  idea  of  nationality  as  opposed  to 
loose  confederacies  of  feudal  communities — of  the  des- 
tinies of  a  nation  as  something  whose  guidance  was  a 
proper  object  of  ambition  for  a  man  whose  faculties  were 
fully  developed,  was  an  idea  whose  hold  on  the  human 
mind  was  strengthened  by  the  Renascence.  The  strength- 
ening of  that  idea  was  not  merely  a  result  of  the  revived 
study  of  Roman  history  and  literature;  for  Imperialism 
was  the  dominant  note  there.  It  came  rather  from  the 
broadening  of  the  horizon  of  thought  and  feeling — from 
the  beginnings  of  vernacular  literature  replacing  partly  the 
universal  Latin — from  the  breakdown  of  feudalism  and 
the  abandonment  of  the  scholastic  methods  of  thought  by 
which  the  universe  had  been  feudalized  in  the  imagina- 
tion of  men.  Wherever  the  influence  of  the  Renascence 
touched,  this  idea  sprang  into  new  life.  In  Germany, 
Celtes,  Hutten  and  their  friends  caught  fire  at  the  image 
of  Germania  Rediviva  and  talked  like  the  makers  of  the 
modern  empire  of  the  glories  of  Hermann,  who  had  stood 
for  Teutonic  liberty  and  checked  the  flight  of  the  Roman 
eagle.  The  idea  of  united  Italy,  mother  of  arts  and  let- 
ters, driving  the  hordes  of  plundering  barbarians  back 
over  the  Alps,  shines  like  a  star  through  the  craft  and 
cruelty  of  Machiavelli's  Prince. 

This  idea  of  nationality  was  not  new  to  England. 
Pride  in  one's  nation  as  including  all  men  who  spoke 
the  same  tongue,  can  be  seen  among  Englishmen  long 
before  the  influence  of  the  Renascence  touched  the  island. 
But  that  influence  deepened  and  strengthened  the  En- 
glish pride  of  nationality. 


THE  RENASCENCE  29 

During  the  sixteenth  century  this  pride  of  nationality 
broke  England  from  obedience  to  Rome  and  under  the 
pressure  of  the  Spanish  crusade,  blessed  by  the  Pope  for 
England's  conquest,  expressed  itself  in  a  deep  reverence 
for  Elizabeth  as  Britannia  incarnate.  It  was  because 
Cromwell  had  felt  the  influence  of  the  Renascence  that  he 
saw  this  ideal  of  nationality  and  flung  himself  with  all 
his  energy  into  the  struggle  to  unite  England  and  to  vin- 
dicate her  independence  of  all  foreign  authority.  The 
means  by  which  he  hoped  to  do  this  was  one  which  most 
men  who  had  been  affected  by  the  influence  of  the  Renas- 
cence, from  Machiavelli  to  Martin  Luther,  approved ;  the 
power  of  an  absolute  king  wisely  used. 

A  great  wave  of  absolutism  swept  over  Europe  in 
the  early  sixteenth  century.  The  need  of  breaking  finally 
the  disorders  of  feudalism  and  the  renewed  study  of  the 
Roman  Empire  inclined  men  of  the  "New  Learning" 
to  believe  that  the  destinies  of  nations  were  safest  in  the 
hands  of  strong  kings.  And  because  he  was  a  man  of 
the  Renascence,  Cromwell  served  not  only  his  ambitions 
but  also  his  ideals  in  helping  Henry  VIII  to  destroy  the 
political  independence  of  the  nobility  and  clergy  and  to 
control  parliament  as  far  as  possible.  He  looked  to  the 
future,  not  to  the  past.  And  the  way  to  the  future  seemed 
to  him  to  be  marked  out  by  absolutism  and  nationality. 

The  influence  of  the  Renascence  when  once  it  crossed 
the  Alps  spread  with  great  rapidity.  Men  began  to  copy 
the  Italian  masters  of  painting  and  sculpture.  They 
showed  their  liking  for  the  new  art  in  the  forms  of  their 
houses  and  the  decorations  of  their  silver  plate.  English 
writers  took  both  their  material  and  their  literary  forms 


30  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

from  Italian  books.  And  these  signs  of  the  Renascence 
are  so  much  more  visible,  the  record  of  them  is  so  much 
better  preserved  than  any  others,  that  we  are  apt  to  forget 
that  the  Renascence  was  not  primarily  an  artistic  and  lit- 
erary change.  The  Renascence  began  with  an  intellectual 
and  moral  ideal.  Petrarch,  in  whose  works  we  find  the 
first  clear  record  of  that  ideal,  was  deeply  moved  by  the 
degradation  and  corruption  of  the  institutions  of  Italy.  A 
lover  of  freedom  he  saw  the  ancient  seats  of  liberty 
fallen  or  trembling  to  their  fall.  Her  city  republics  were 
so  distracted  by  party  hatreds,  their  citizens  so  averse  to 
the  discipline  of  arms,  that  her  streets  and  fields  were  the 
hunting  grounds  of  bands  of  foreign  mercenaries,  kept 
to  the  standard  by  the  love  of  plunder  and  blood,  or  the 
ill-gotten  gold  of  unscrupulous  rulers  anxious  for  more 
subjects  to  oppress.  Rome,  the  symbol  of  the  power  of 
ancestors  who  ruled  the  world,  was  half  in  ruins.  Her 
palaces  were  empty,  her  churches  decayed.  Wolves  came 
into  her  squares  at  night ;  savage  men,  untouched  by  law, 
fought  in  them  by  day.  The  Papacy,  which,  a  hundred 
years  before  Petrarch's  birth,  wielded  power  over  all 
Europe,  had  crossed  the  Alps,  established  its  seat  at 
Avignon  and  sunk  almost  into  an  appanage  of  the  French 
crown.  This  loss  of  liberty  and  ruin  of  the  Church 
stirred  Petrarch  to  indignation.  The  strong  passion  of 
his  soul  found  vent  in  letters  which  made  his  name  known 
from  Sicily  to  the  Baltic.  He  poured  out  upon  the 
cardinals  a  flood  of  scorn,  warning,  entreaty,  if  by  any 
means  he  could  persuade  them,  to  enable  the  Pope  to 
seek  power  along  the  abandoned  path  of  duty  as  the  moral 
arbiter  of  the  world;  the  Vicegerent  of  God  on  earth. 


THE  RENASCENCE  31 

And  the  strong  motive  of  his  enthusiasm  for  a  new  ideal 
of  education  was  the  need  of  a  new  generation  of  men, 
to  save  church  and  state,  to  restore  decadent  Italy  to  her 
ancient  glory. 

The  ideal  of  a  new  learning,  humane  rather  than  tech- 
nical, producing  the  men  the  world  needed,  conquered 
Italian  society  in  the  letter  but  not  in  the  spirit.  When 
it  was  at  its  height  Italy  was  profoundly  corrupt.  Refine- 
ment went  hand  in  hand  with  licentiousness.  Delicate 
taste  was  joined  to  forgetfulness  of  principle.  The  lives 
of  the  artists  seldom  matched  the  beauty  of  their  pic- 
tures. Titian,  in  whose  work  Ruskin  discovered  such 
abounding  moral  quality,  would  have  been  entirely  un- 
able to  understand  the  moral  enthusiasm  which  made 
his  modern  disciple  found  the  society  of  St.  George.  The 
Papacy  was  swept  into  the  current.  The  highly  developed 
ego  of  Alexander  VI  carried  him  without  remorse  into 
brutal  crimes.  Leo  X  admired  pictures  while  the  invet- 
erate and  notorious  abuses  of  the  church  drove  Germany 
into  schisms  and  heresy.  And  at  the  very  height  of  the 
Renascence  Valois  and  Hapsburg  fought  over  the  spoils 
of  helpless  Italy.  It  is  true  indeed  that  in  the  end  men 
trained  according  to  the  ideals  of  the  Renascence  re- 
formed the  church.  The  leaders  of  the  Catholic  Refor- 
mation were  for  the  most  part  advocates  and  products  of 
the  "New  Learning,"  and  the  Jesuits,  the  most  active 
agents  of  the  decrees  of  Trent,  made  the  humanities  the 
centre  of  the  system  of  education  by  which  they  raised  up 
a  generation  of  princes  faithful  to  the  church.  But  for  a 
time  the  men  of  the  Renascence  in  Italy  forgot  moral 
ideals.  Individuality  ran  riot  in  a  carnival  of  egotism. 


32  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

The  humanist,  a  new  type  of  man,  as  representative  a 
figure  of  the  Renascence  as  the  knight  was  a  representa- 
tive figure  in  feudal  times,  gives  the  plainest  proof  of 
this  declension  of  the  Renascence  from  the  ideals  and 
purposes  of  its  first  great  advocates. 

By  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  the  failure 'of 
the  reform  Petrarch  had  hoped  from  his  new  learning  is 
prophesied  by  two  distinguished  humanists  like  Poggio 
and  Filelfo,  alternately  flatterers  and  blackmailers,  en- 
vious, malicious,  obscene,  of  unlimited  vanity  and  greed. 
There  were,  it  is  true,  humanists,  poets  and  artists  of  a 
type  far  higher  than  this  notorious  pair.  But  from  1475 
on,  few,  even  among  the  most  respectable,  escape  some 
taint  from  the  moral  corruption  which  was  like  a  disease 
in  the  bones  of  the  men  of  the  Italian  Renascence.  And 
the  volunteer  humanist,  Aretino,  the  man  who  without  the 
humanities  became  rich  and  famous  by  his  pen,  is  an  ex- 
ponent of  the  declension  of  the  Renascence  on  the  soil 
where  it  started. 


II 

PIETRO  ARETINO 

IN  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Count  Maz- 
zuchelli,  one  of  the  most  distinguished  litterateurs  of  his 
day,  published  a  life  of  Pietro  Aretino.  The  preface  to 
the  second  edition  begins  thus:  "The  name  of  Pietro 
Aretino  has  always  been  so  famous  in  the  world  that  it 
never  could  be  hid  from  the  knowledge  of  even  the  least 
learned."  And  Addison  in  a  Spectator  written  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  century,  declines  to  tell  the  career  of 
Aretino  as  an  illustration  of  his  point  because  he  is  "too 
trite  an  instance.  Everyone  knows  that  all  the  Kings  of 
Europe  were  his  tributaries." 

Neither  of  these  sentences  would  be  written  now.  The 
fame  of  Aretino,  so  vivid  two  centuries  after  his  death, 
has  declined  until  today  many  people  of  cultivation  would 
know  little  more  of  him  than  his  name.  It  is  perhaps 
just  as  well  not  to  know  anything  about  Pietro  Aretino, 
because  up  to  the  last  few  years  it  was  difficult  to  know 
the  truth  about  him.  Pietro's  life  was  written  by  ene- 
mies. And  as  his  contemporary,  Cranmer,  said  of  his 
own  foes, — "They  dragged  him  out  of  the  dunghill."  The 
scandal  mongers  of  later  generations  enlarged  their  in- 
vectives into  the  following  story,  and  features  of  the  dis- 
reputable career  thus  created  appear  in  every  mention  of 
Pietro  Aretino  except  those  of  a  few  Italian  writers  of  the 
last  dozen  years. 

33 


34  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

He  was  the  illegitimate  son  of  a  gentleman  of  Arezzo 
and  a  notoriously  bad  woman.  After  such  an  upbringing 
as  might  be  expected  from-  his  parentage,  he  fled  from 
Arezzo  because  of  an  impious  poem  (a  variation  of  the 
legend  makes  him  steal  from  his  mother).  He  made  a 
living  in  Perugia  as  a  book-binder  and  picked  up  his  ed- 
ucation by  reading  the  books  he  handled.  There  was  a 
picture  in  the  city  representing  the  Madonna  at  the  foot 
of  the  cross.  Aretino  painted  a  lute  in  her  outstretched 
arms.  After  this  sacrilege  he  fled  to  Rome,  where  he 
became  a  servant  in  the  house  of  Chigi,  the  great  banker. 
He  stole  a  silver  cup  from  his  master  and  fled  to  Venice, 
where  he  led  a  life  of  extraordinary  debauchery  and  won 
an  evil  reputation  as  an  atheist  and  writer  of  pornographic 
literature.  He  was  fatally  hurt  by  falling  over  backward 
from  his  seat  in  a  fit  of  laughter  at  an  anecdote  about  a 
dishonorable  adventure  of  one  of  his  sisters,  whose  lives 
were  worse  than  his  mother's.  And  this  scene  was  painted 
in  1854  by  the  German  painter  Feuerbach.  Finally  he 
died  uttering  one  of  the  most  profane  sayings  in  the  an- 
nals of  blasphemy.  In  addition  to  this  unsavory  life  his- 
tory, entirely  false,  Aretino  has  been  labeled  with  a  larger 
number  of  strong  epithets  than  any  other  man  in  the  his- 
tory of  literature, — "The  ignominy  of  his  century,"  "The 
Csesar  Borgia  of  literature,"  "Perverter  of  morals  and 
letters,"  "The  synonym  for  all  infamies."  These  are  a 
few  of  the  judgments  that  have  been  passed  upon  him. 

To  know  Pietro  Aretino  in  the  four  thousand  letters 
from  and  to  him,  which  have  survived  in  print,  is  to  recog- 
nize that  he  had  great  capacities  and  some  amiable  quali- 
ties which  won  him  many  ardent  admirers  and  a  num- 


PIETRO  ARETINO  35 

her  of  warm  friends.  But  it  is  also  to  perceive  that  he 
was  essentially  selfish  and  corrupt.  In  spite  of  the  strain 
of  religiosity  in  Pietro's  character,  it  is  hard  to  raise  any 
very  strong  objections  to  the  epitaph  falsely  supposed  to 
have  stood  on  his  tomb, — "Here  lies  Pietro  Aretino,  who 
spoke  evil  of  everyone  except  God.  He  never  spoke  evil 
of  God  simply  because  he  never  knew  him." 

If,  then,  the  epitaph  is  just,  why  trouble  to  retell  cor- 
rectly the  story  of  a  bad  life?  Simply  because  to  put 
Pietro  Aretino  aside  labeled  and  classified  by  an  absolute 
moral  judgment, — to  make  him  a  scapegoat  for  the  sins 
of  his  times — is  to  miss  knowing  a  vivid  and  illuminating 
personality.  To  judge  him  sympathetically,  to  see  his 
career  as  it  appeared  to  himself  and  to  many  of  his  con- 
temporaries, is  to  throw  upon  the  society  of  the  late 
Renascence  in  Italy  gleams  of  light  comparable  in  reveal- 
ing power  to  those  which  shine  from  the  pages  of  Benve- 
nuto  Cellini.  If  this  cobbler's  son,  who  in  an  age  of  pedc 
try  gained  fame  and  fortune  by  an  untrained  pen,  whoi 
Titian  painted  out  of  close  friendship,  whose  head  San\ 
Savino  cast  on  the  bronze  doors  of  Saint  Mark,  of 
whom  Ariosto  wrote  in  Orlando  Furioso, — "Behold  the 
scourge  of  Princes,  the  divine  Pietro  Aretino" * — toj 
whom  his  native  city  gave  the  title  Salvator  Patriae,2  am 
the  King  of  France  sent  a  gold  chain  of  eight  pounds^ 
weight,  whom  the  Pope  rose  from  his  seat  to  receive 
a  kiss  of  welcome  and  who  by  command  rode  in  a  stately 
procession  in  the  post  of  honour  at  the  Emperor's  right 
hand, — if  this  man  be  a  degenerate  type,  his  degeneration 

1  Canto  XLVI,  S.  14. 

1  Lettere  al  Aretino,  page  83,  Vol.  I,  Part  I. 


36  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

cannot  be  diagnosed  by  a  fixed  moral  judgment — for  his 
character  and  career  are  symptomatic  of  the  disease  of 
his  times. 

Pietro  was  born  in  Arezzo  in  1492,  of  a  poor  shoemaker, 
and  his  wife.1  He  always  had  a  very  tender  memory  of 
his  mother.  Years  afterward  he  got  his  friend  and  fel- 
low-townsman, Vasari,  to  copy  the  Virgin  in  an  annuncia- 
tion over  the  door  of  a  church  in  Arezzo,  for  which  she 
had  served  as  a  model,  and  was  delighted  to  trace  a  resem- 
blance to  the  picture  in  the  face  of  his  little  daughter.2 
He  left  his  birth-place  to  seek  his  fortune  and  went  to 
Perugia,  where  probably  he  studied  painting  without  suc- 
cess.3 When  about  twenty-five  years  old  he  went  to 
Rome.4  There  he  found  a  patron  in  Agostino  Ch'igi.  This 
descendant  of  an  influential  Siennese  family  inherited 
from  his  father  the  business  of  a  banker.  His  skill  and 
success  gained  enormous  wealth.  And  this  joined  to  his 
personal  qualities  made  him  the  friend  of  the  Pope.  He 
became  papal  banker,  and  to  a  certain  extent  finance  minis- 
ter. His  social  position  was  even  more  imposing  than  his 
standing  in  the  business  world.  He  was  permitted  by 
Julius  II  to  take  the  coat  of  arms  of  the  della  Rovere,  which 
made  him  a  sort  of  adopted  relative  to  that  Pope.  He  was 
a  great  friend  and  patron  of  the  study  of  Greek  literature, 
a  most  liberal  and  skillful  connoisseur  of  art.  The  best 
creators  of  beautiful  things  in  Rome,  Sodoma,  Peruzzi, 
Viti,  Raphael,  worked  for  him  and  gathered  round  his  ta- 

1  Luzio,  La  famiglia  di  Pietro  Aretino.     Giorinale  Stor,  della  Letteratura. 

'Lettere    V,    113-65. 

8  Luzio,  Pietro  Aretino  nei  primi  suoi  anni,  etc.,  page  109.  Torino,  1888. 
Bertani's  answer,  note  page  12,  is  incomplete. 

4  Unless  this  age  must  be  set  back  by  examination  of  the  poem  alluded  to 
in  the  note  on  page  37. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  37 

ble.  The  poets,  scholars  and  wits  flocked  to  his  house, 
where  his  entertainments  displayed  the  insolence  of  wealth 
amid  the  graces  of  literature  and  art.  At  a  banquet  he 
gave  to  celebrate  the  signing  of  his  will  the  tables  were 
laid  in  front  of  the  frescoes  where  Raphael's  hand  has  told 
the  story  of  Psyche.  The  courses  rivaled  in  their  strange- 
ness and  profusion  the  days  of  Heliogabalus.  And  at  the 
end  of  each  service  the  gold  and  silver  dishes  were  flung 
out  of  the  window  into  the  river;  though  in  order  to 
save  his  pocket  book  without  lowering  his  pride  the  Pope's 
host  had  nets  stretched  beneath  the  waters  to  catch  them. 
In  such  a  household  the  wit  and  literary  talent  of  young 
Pietro  could  find  the  stimulus  of  applause.  His  natural 
edacity  and  insolence  would  grow  by  what  it  fed  upon. 

From  the  house  of  Chigl,  Pietro  passed  to  the  Court  of 
Leo  X,  that  Pope  who  "enjoyed  the  papacy  God  had  given 
him,"  spent  eight  thousand  ducats  a  year  on  his  kitchen,  a 
hundred  thousand  in  gaming  and  presents  to  Court  fa- 
vorites, gave  Michael  Angelo  six  thousand  for  painting 
the  Sistine  Chapel  and  showed  equal  zest  for  a  hunting 
trip,  a  fresco  of  Raphael,  an  indecent  comedy,  a  discus- 
sion between  Bembo  and  Bibbiena  or  the  elaborate  farce 
of  a  wild  practical  joke.1  In  the  cultivated  company  gath- 
ered in  Leo's  palace,  Pietro  soon  made  a  place  for  him- 
self among  the  best — not  by  learning,  for  he  had  none,  but 
by  the  vigour  of  his  language.2  A  poet  known  for  skill 

1  Lettere  Aretino,    I,    26.      Also   the   Buffone   di   Leone   X    in   Arturo    Graf 
Attraverso    il    Cinquecento.      Torino    Ermanno    Loescher. 

2  Apparently  Pietro  went  to  Rome  and  gained  fame  there  earlier  than  any  of 
his  recent  Italian  biographers  are  aware  of.     At  all  events  Le  Glay  Correspond- 
ence de  Maximilien   I  et  de  Marguerite  d'Autriche  tome  II,  page  409,  note  2, 
quotes  the  first  lines  of  a  poem  written  at  the  command  of  L,eo  X  immediately 
after  the   battle  of  Guinegate    (Aug.,   1513),  to  celebrate  that  victory  of   Maxi- 
milian.    It   is   printed   in   "Nouvelle   Edition    d'un   poeme   sur   la  Journee  de 


38  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

in  reciting  improvised  verses  to  the  lute  mentions  him 
among  the  famous  men  of  Leo's  Court,  Bembo,  Castig- 
lione,  Sadolet  and  others,  as  "a  singer  sweet  and  free, 
whose  lithe  tongue  had  the  mastery  both  of  praise  and 
blame."  1  But,  either  because  the  men  he  knew  were  not 
laudable  or  because  his  spirit  was  acrid,  blaming  evidently 
came  easier  to  him  than  praising.  A  pastoral  dialogue  of 
the  time  makes  one  speaker  advise  the  other, — "Try  your 
best  to  have  Aretino  for  your  friend  because  he  is  a  bad 
enemy  to  make.  God  guard  every  one  from  his  tongue."  2 
In  1521  Leo  X  died.  It  was  centuries  since  Rome  had 
seen  so  young  a  Pope,  for  Leo  was  consecrated  at  the 
age  of  thirty-eight,  and  his  sudden  death  after  a  pontifi- 
cate of  eight  years  suggested  the  idea  of  poison.  But  such 
a  charge  is  too  common  to  be  serious  and  historians  are 
now  disposed  to  see  in  the  accusation  a  proof  not  of  the 
crimes  of  ecclesiastics,  but  of  the  bitter  hatreds  bred  by 
their  strifes.  We  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  Leo  X 
died  of  disease.  Hate  followed  his  bier.  Every  enemy  of 
the  Medici  family  and  party  took  arms,  the  ready  arms  of 
voice  and  pen.  Cardinal  Soderini  delivered  an  oration  in 
which  he  thanked  God  for  having  delivered  the  church 
from  Leo's  tyranny.8  A  letter  from  Rome  reported  that 
no  Pope  since  the  church  of  God  existed  ever  left  a  worse 
memory  after  his  death,  so  much  so  that  all  Rome  is  say- 

Guinegate  4°  dedie  by  M.  de  Portia  to  the  Roxburgh  Club  and  La  Societe  des 
Bibliophiles  fran^ais.  I  have  not  been  able  to  examine  this  pamphlet.  The 
account  given  by  L,e  Glay  indicates  that  Aretino  was  well  known  in  Rome 
three  years  before  the  tentative  date  assigned  by  Rossi  and  Bertani  for  his 
arrival  there. 

1  Cited  from  MSS.  by  Vittorio  Rossi,  Pasquinate  di  Pietro  Aretino,  etc. 
Palermo-Torino,  1891. 

*  Pasquinate,  etc.     Appendix,  page  161. 

8  Sanuto  XXXII,  C.  158,  v.     Quoted  Rossi,  X. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  39 

ing  "He  came  in  like  a  fox,  he  lived  like  a  lion  (Leo),  he 
died  like  a  dog."  His  wasteful  extravagance  and  family 
ambitions  had  led  him  into  all  sorts  of  unseemly  schemes 
for  raising  money.  The  Venetian  orators  sent  to  greet 
Leo's  successor  interpolate  some  descriptions  of  ancient 
monuments  in  their  relation  to  the  Senate.  In  describing 
the  Pantheon  they  say, — "The  great  ancient  portal  is 
entirely  of  metal  which  contains  so  much  gold  that  many 
say  it  is  as  good  as  the  best  gold  florins,  a  saying  not  to 
be  believed,  for  if  it  were  so,  Pope  Leo  would  never  have 
left  the  doorway  in  place."  1  A  poet  left  the  following 
epitaph :  "That  throne  great  and  ornamented  with  riches 
he  left  as  it  were,  extinct  and  ruined.  See  what  a  man 
has  worn  the  crown.  Murderous  Tyrant  is  his  true 
title.  St.  Peter  have  patience,  for  if  you  take  another 
Medicina  he  will  be  to  thy  good  flock  a  Catilina." 

These  were,  of  course,  the  utterances  of  Leo's  enemies, 
and  the  friends  of  his  family  rallied  at  once  to  the  de- 
fence. They  did  not  pay  much  attention  to  the  dead, 
they  looked  to  the  future  Pope.  For  the  eighteen 
months  of  one  of  the  longest  conclaves  on  record  the 
family  faction  did  all  in  their  power  to  force  the  elec- 
tion of  Cardinal  Giulio  de'  Medici,  Leo's  cousin,  with 
the  bar  sinister.  In  the  long  struggle  behind  the  closed 
doors  of  the  voting  rooms  where  the  Cardinals  were  shut 
up,  Rome  took  the  greatest  interest.  Pools  were  sold  on 
the  result  and  the  prices  of  the  favourites  rose  and  fell  ac- 
cording to  the  rumours  more  or  less  authentic  which 
leaked  out  from  the  secret  conclave.  Medici  started  as  a 
prime  favourite.  But  his  price  soon  fell  as  it  became  evi- 

1  Alberi,  Relazioni  degli  Ambasciatori  Veneti.     Serie  II,  Vol.   Ill,  page  109. 


40  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

dent  that  the  majority,  however  discordant,  were  willing 
to  unite  against  another  Pope  with  the  arms  of  the  triple 
balls.  One  of  his  backers,  however,  was  not  discouraged. 
Pietro  waged  during  the  whole  conclave,  and  even  after 
the  struggle  was  lost,  a  bitter  fight  for  his  patron,  putting 
forth  a  succession  of  mordant  satires  on  every  Cardinal 
except  the  Cardinal  de'  Medici. 

The  form  which  he  gave  them  foretells  the  vigorous 
originality  of  his  talent.  He  never  cared  for  the  fashion- 
able style  and  methods  of  the  trained  litterateurs  of  his 
day.  His  bent  took  him  into  unbeaten  paths.  Six  times 
in  his  life  he  gave  to  a  literary  form,  as  yet  but  little  used, 
power  and  vogue.  In  this  way  he  made,  while  fighting  for 
his  patron,  the  beginning  of  fame  which  could  be  called 
Italian.  Pietro  Aretino  was,  so  far  as  we  know,  the  first 
man  whose  name  became  noted  outside  of  Rome  as  a 
writer  of  pasquinades. 

The  Italians  of  the  fifteenth  century  adopted  the  habit 
of  their  classic  ancestors  and  were  fond  of  writing  verses 
to  fix  on  walls  of  their  friends'  gardens  or  in  places  where 
the  public  might  see  them.  So  Shakespeare,  read  in  Ital- 
ian romances,  makes  the  love-sick  Orlando  hang  verses 
on  the  trees  for  Rosalind  to  find.  But  the  verses  which 
the  early  passers  in  the  piazzas  of  Florence  or  Rome 
found  from  time  to  time,  were  not  often  love  verses. 
The  Italians,  and  especially  the  Romans,  inherited  from 
their  forefathers  that  taste  for  satire  which  had  avenged 
itself  against  the  yoke  of  the  Caesars  by  epigrams  sharper 
than  swords.  Their  dialects  lend  themselves  easily  to 
rhyme,  and  the  power  of  talking  in  meter  has  never  been 
rare  among  them.  One  can  still  find  among  the  Tuscan 


PIETRO  ARETINO  41 

hills  improvisator!,  who  given  a  subject  and  the  proper 
number  of  rhymed  words  will  compose  a  sonnet  faster 
than  it  can  be  written  down  and,  the  first  sonnet  finished, 
will  frequently  succeed  in  making  another  on  a 
different  subject  with  the  same  rhymes  reversed.  This 
facility  in  rhyming  and  this  satiric  temper  made  the  Ro- 
mans delight  in  epigrams  and  poems  playing  upon  the 
weakness  and  the  vices  of  the  great  men  of  the  day.  And 
the  most  shining  mark  for  these  arrows  of  wit  winged 
with  rhyme  were  the  members  of  the  papal  court  from 
the  Pope  down  to  its  secretaries. 

This  taste  found  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury a  means  of  expression  and  a  symbol — Maestro  Pas- 
quino,  a  personage  who  for  nearly  four  hundred  years  held 
up  to  laughter  the  crimes  and  follies  of  the  first  society 
of  Rome.  At  last  in  1870  when  the  law  gave  entire  free- 
dom to  the  press,  unable  to  breathe  the  air  of  liberty,  he 
died,  and  his  voice,  which  was  wont  to  take  especial  delight 
in  the  malevolent  or  scandalous  rumours  which  flew 
around  the  closed  doors  of  every  papal  conclave,  has  not 
been  heard  since.  The  long  series  of  his  poems  is  finished. 
Just  how  they  began  and  where  he  got  his  name  is  not 
quite  certain. 

In  the  year  1501  the  Cardinal  of  Naples  had  the  ca- 
price to  place  a  fragment  of  an  antique  statue  on  a  pedes- 
tal at  an  angle  of  his  palace,  and  the  statue  received  the 
name  of  Maestro  Pasquino.  Tradition  says  the  name  was 
inherited  from  a  man;  according  to  one  report  a  witty 
cobbler  with  an  evil  tongue ;  according  to  another  a  tailor ; 
according  to  another  a  schoolmaster,  who  had  lived  near, 
and  whose  festival  was  for  many  years  celebrated  by  hang- 


42  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ing  Latin  verses  on  his  stone  namesake.  The  festival 
celebrated  by  Latin  verses  on  the  statue  certainly  took 
place,  for  the  verses  were  printed  "with  the  biting  ones 
left  out."  And  whether  the  schoolmaster  ever  drew  the 
breath  of  life  or  not,  it  seems  certain  that  the  tailor  and 
the  barber  are  creatures  of  myth.  This  annual  fete  of 
Master  Pasquino  so  raised  the  fame  of  the  statue  that  in 
the  course  of  a  few  years  it  became  a  more  and  more  fa- 
voured place  to  fix  the  biting  verses  the  Romans  loved. 
So  a  young  German  poet,  Ulrich  von  Hutten,  a  warm  ad- 
herent of  the  Emperor  Maximilian,  visiting  Rome  about 
1514,  wrote  a  satiric  song  and  fixed  it  on  the  statue  of 
Pasquino. 

Popular  leaflets  in  the  vulgar  tongue  gradually 
displaced  the  Latin  verses  of  the  supposed  pedagogue, 
who  thus  became,  in  the  course  of  a  generation,  the 
terrible  gossiping  censor  he  remained  until  his  death.  It 
is  not  possible  to  trace  exactly  the  victory  of  this  satiric 
Pasquino  who  talked  Italian,  over  the  scholastic  Pasquino 
who  talked  Latin.  But  the  earliest  manuscript  collection 
of  Pasquinades,  as  the  world  came  to  know  them  during 
the  four  hundred  years  of  Pasquino's  life,  was  made  in 
the  year  of  the  death  of  Leo  X  and  is  filled  mainly  by 
verses  of  Pietro  Aretino— the  first  man  to  win  the  dan- 
gerous but  envied  title  of  Secretary  of  Pasquino. 

The  deadlock  of  the  conclave  ended  to  the  stupefaction 
of  every  one,  in  the  election  of  the  Cardinal  of  Tortosa 
(Adrian  VI),  an  absent  man  who  had  not  even  been 
named  as  a  possibility — one  whom  Italians  spoke  of  as  a 
Flemish  barbarian — ignorant  of  literature,  blind  to  art,  a 
monk  and  a  scholastic.  Aretino  gave  full  voice  to  that 


PIETRO  ARETINO  43 

disgust  which  continued  during  all  Adrian's  life  to  cover 
with  ridicule  his  honest  efforts  to  live  and  rule  like 
a  Vicar  of  Christ  and,  at  death,  crowned  his  doctor's  door 
with  laurel  and  the  motto  Salvator  Patriae. 

When  the  Pope-elect  slowly  drew  near  to  Rome  Aretino 
thought  it  wise  to  leave.  Adrian  wanted  to  throw  Pas- 
quino  into  the  Tiber  and  was  only  dissuaded  by  being  told 
it  was  useless  to  try  to  drown  him ;  "like  a  frog  he  would 
talk  out  of  the  water."  If  the  Pope  could  have  laid  hands 
on  Aretino,  he  certainly  would  have  tried  whether  the 
Chancellor  of  Pasquino  could  talk  out  of  a  dungeon.  He 
wrote  to  get  him  from  Florence,  where  he  had  taken 
refuge  with  the  Cardinal  de'  Medici.  The  Cardinal,  of 
course,  would  not  surrender  his  supporter  but  deemed  it 
best  for  Aretino  to  go  to  the  camp  of  his  distant  cousin, 
Giovanni  de'  Medici,  called  of  the  Black  Bands.  He  was 
the  first  soldier  that  the  Medici  had  yet  produced,  a  for- 
midable antagonist,  a  leader  adored  by  the  black  mer- 
cenaries who  followed  him — perhaps  the  most  famous 
Italian  mart  of  arms  of  his  day.  A  close  friendship  at  once 
united  the  dreaded  captain  and  the  dreaded  satirist.  Are- 
tino became  the  comrade  of  Giovanni. 

But  this  intimacy  was  interrupted  by  the  death  of 
Adrian  VI,  and  Aretino  went  back  to  Rome  to  share 
the  fortune  of  the  man  for  whom,  to  cite  his  own  phrase, 
"My  virtu  which  fed  on  your  praise,  took  arms  against 
Rome  when  the  throne  of  Leo  became  vacant."  When 
Aretino  came  back  to  Rome  he  was  not  at  first  disposed 
"to  make  Pasquino  talk."  The  man  whose  fortunes  he 
had  followed  as  a  literary  bravo  had  at  length  won.  Leo 
X,  son  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  had  been  succeeded  as 


44 

Vicar  of  Christ  after  the  brief  pontificate  of  a  northern 
barbarian,  by  Giulio  de'  Medici  as  Clement  VII.  The 
whole  set  of  those  who  lived  by  their  talents  or  their  wits 
rejoiced  that  a  Pope  representing  the  reactionary  ideas  of 
the  Middle  Ages  was  replaced  by  a  man  of  progress  in 
touch  with  the  times.  Adrian  had  taken  great  interest  in 
religion  and  none  in  art.  They  hoped  that  Clement  would 
not  spend  too  much  energy  in  trying  to  foster  the  old 
fashioned  virtues,  and  would  give  a  great  deal  of  atten- 
tion to  promoting  men  of  virtu  who  could  create  with 
pen,  pencil  or  chisel  things  to  please  the  mind  or  the 
taste.  The  temper  of  the  secretary  of  Pasquino  was 
soothed  by  golden  hopes,  his  dreaded  and  applauded 
tongue  was  still. 

His  contemporaries  were  ill  content  with  that  silence. 
After  colour  and  form  in  the  plastic  arts,  the  Italians  of 
the  early  sixteenth  century  seem  to  have  found  most 
pleasure  in  satire,  and  Aretino  had  shown  himself  able  to 
give  them  a  satire  suited  to  their  taste,  suggesting  no 
ideals,  hoping  no  reforms, — so  local  and  personal  that  it 
is  hard  for  another  generation  to  read  and  understand 
it ;  no  bitter  passion  of  the  soul  but  just  a  delicate  morsel 
for  the  intense  "schadenfreude"  of  the  day.  They  called 
on  him  not  to  stop  his  career.  What  stood  for  the  pub- 
lic of  our  time  demanded  something  from  his  pen.  So  a 
poet  wrote  in  a  dialogue  between  a  Traveller  and  Mar- 
forio,  a  gossip  of  Pasquino : 

Traveller: — "Marforio,  since  the  day  when  this  Pope 
was  elected,  your  brother  Pasquino  is  grown  almost  dumb 
and  Aretino  no  longer  reproves  vice.  What  have  you 
to  say  about  it  ?" 


PIETRO  ARETINO  45 

Marforio : — "Why,  don't  you  know  that  Armellino  has 
cut  short  Pasquino  by  giving  him  to  understand  that  if  he 
makes  a  sound  they'll  slit  his  tongue  for  him,  so  the  poor 
chap  doesn't  dare  to  breathe,  much  less  talk." 

Way: — "Pietro  Aretino,  who  is  in  such  high  favor, 
was  taken  with  a  mouthful  of  bait  like  a  frog,  and  now  he 
sings  but  he  doesn't  want  to  touch  the  court.  That  would 
be  a  mistake,  because  it  is  giving  him  means  to  play  the 
swell  like  a  baron,  etc."1 

But  it  was  difficult  for  Aretino  to  keep  his  pen  still,  and 
he  used  it  in  a  kind  of  writing  which,  though  it  occupied 
but  a  small  part  of  his  works,  has  fixed  the  attention  of 
posterity  to  the  neglect  of  all  the  rest.  Giulio  Romano, 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  painters  of  the  day,  painted 
a  series  of  sixteen  pictures  and  Marc  Antonio  Raimondi 
engraved  them.  The  plates  have  fortunately  perished  but 
descriptions  are  enough  to  tell  us  that  in  English-speaking 
countries  printer  and  seller  of  such  plates  would  now  be 
sent  to  the  penitentiary.  At  the  instance  of  the  Datario,  his 
most  trusted  counsellor,  the  Pope  put  Raimondi  in  prison. 
But  Aretino  appealed  to  the  Pope  to  set  him  free  and  was 
successful.  Then  Aretino  proceeded  to  write  for  the  series, 
sixteen  sonnets  which  matched  the  pictures.  The  Datario 
was  indignant  and  Aretino  found  it  best  to  retire  from 
Rome  to  Arezzo.  That  the  disgrace  was  not  very  serious 
is  shown  by  two  letters  from  Giovanni  de'  Medici,  ad- 
dressed just  at  this  time  to  "The  Stupendous  Pietro  Are- 
tino, my  true  friend,"  and  to  "Pietro  Aretino,  Miracle  of 
Nature."  2  And  in  a  short  time  we  find  him  back  at  Rome 

1  Printed  from  MSS.  by  Luzio,  Nuova  Antologia,  Aug.,  1890,  Vol.  28,  third 
series,  page  693. 

*I,ettere  al  Aretino,  Vol.   I,  pt.   1,   Letters  1  and  2. 


46  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

in  high  favor  with  Clement  VII,  who  made  him  a  Knight 
of  Rhodes. 

One  of  the  most  distinguished  litterateurs  of  the  day, 
whose  presence  was  sought  by  every  cultivated  court  of 
Italy,1  was  Bernado  Accolti,  the  reasons  for  whose  great 
esteem  among  his  contemporaries  do  not  appear  in  any  of 
his  verses  which  have  survived.  He  was  known  every- 
where by  the  title  of  L'Unico  Aretino,  because  he  had  been 
born  in  Arezzo.  This  recognized  model  and  authority  in 
the  poetic  art  on  one  occasion  turned  to  Pietro,  in  the 
presence  of  the  Pope  and  the  whole  court,  assembled  to 
hear  him  recite  his  verses,  and  said : — "Holy  Shepherd,  I 
rejoice  in  your  presence  because  I  leave  behind  me  another 
self  from  my  own  city."  2 

Pietro's  thanks  for  the  renewed  favour  and  increased 
reputation  he  received  at  the  Court  of  Clement  VII,  ap- 
peared in  verses  praising  the  Datario  and  the  Pope,  than 
whom, — "Christ  could  not  find  today  a  better  Vicar."  3 
For  that  praise  he  also  found  another  expression  in  a  lit- 
erary form  to  which  he  gave  new  force  and  vigour.  In 
the  first  of  his  comedies,  which  showed  less  dependence 
upon  the  form  and  method  of  Roman  comedy  than  any  of 
the  few  which  had  previously  been  written  in  Italian,  he 
interpolated  into  the  dialogue,  somewhat  after  the  fashion 
of  the  modern  "gag,"  complimentary  references  to  the 
Pope  and  his  Court.4  But  this  sort  of  writing  did  not  sat- 

1  Castiglione,   II   Cortigiano. 

3  Aretino,  Lettere,  V,  fol.  45. 

•Laude  di  Clemente  VII  del  divino  Poeta  M.  P.  Aretino,  Roma,  1524. 
Quoted  by  Bertani,  page  44,  from  an  article  by  Luzio  on  a  unique  copy  of 
this  book. 

4  Luzio,  Pietro  Aretino  nei  primi  suoi  anni,  etc.,  page  2,  note  2.     Report  on  a 
MS. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  47 

isfy  either  himself  or  his  admirers.  On  the  seventh  of 
June,  1525,  the  Marquis  of  Mantua  wrote  to  Pietro  by  the 
hand  of  his  secretary, — "You  promised  several  days  ago 
to  send  some  beautiful  and  pleasing  compositions  made 
for  Pasquino,  and  we  have  been  continually  in  eager  ex- 
pectation because  we  want  always  to  have  some  new  fruit 
of  your  active  talent  and  we  don't  know  why  we  suffer 
such  a  dearth  of  them  unless  it  is  to  make  us  more  hungry 
for  them.  But  remember  that  your  poems  cannot  be  easily 
concealed  and  when  they  are  known  all  over  Rome  and, 
as  it  were,  all  over  Italy,  we  don't  take  as  much  pleasure 
in  them,  not  because  they  are  not  the  same  after  as  before 
publication,  but  because  novelty  commends  everything  and 
adds  value  to  valuable  things,  etc.,  etc." 

To  which  the  Duke  added  a  postscript  in  his  own  hand, 
— "Please  M.  Pietro  send  me  some  of  your  compositions 
and  kiss  the  feet  of  His  Holiness  for  me.  And  I  am  en- 
tirely yours,  entirely  yours,  the  Marquis  of  Mantua." 

Pasquino  was  talking  again  and  the  result  was  that 
Aretino,  riding  alone  one  day,  was  dragged  from  his 
horse  and  left  for  dead  with  dagger  wounds.  Certain 
letters  suggest  that  it  was  not  the  first  time  his  quill  had 
been  answered  by  steel.  But  this  time  his  wounds  were 
more  serious.  He  barely  escaped  with  his  life. 

Such  an  accident  might  easily  happen  to  anyone  in  that 
day.  Nor  were  artists  and  literary  men  exempt  from 
the  danger  of  the  knife  or  free  from  a  desire  to  use  it. 
Bembo  was  stabbed  in  his  youth.  Benvenuto  Cellini  made 
deadly  assaults  on  several  men  who  had  insulted  him. 
Leone  Leoni  tried  to  murder  three  rivals,  among  them 
the  son  of  his  friend  Titian. 


48  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Pietro  was  not  always  very  severe  against  this  way  of 
"vindicating  honour."  Many  years  later  when  his  own 
henchman,  Ambrogio  Eusebeii,  cut  Franco  in  the  face  with 
a  dagger  for  attacking  his  master  with  sonnets,  Aretino 
writes  of  it  in  a  letter  destined  for  publication  with  a  pleas- 
ure lessened  only  by  the  reflection  that  the  wound  will 
win  for  the  victim  a  charity  he  does  not  deserve.  He  sol- 
emnly denied  that  he  had  instigated  the  deed  for,  though 
Franco's  "insolence  deserves  punishment,  it  was  cruel  to 
punish  it  with  steel."  1  But  his  regret  veils  ill  his  satis- 
faction in  the  loyalty  of  his  servant. 

Circumstances,  however,  alter  judgments.  Pietro  left 
no  stone  unturned  to  get  Clement  to  punish  his  assailant. 

Everybody  knew  who  had  tried  to  kill  Aretino,  a  cer- 
tain Achilles  della  Volta,  of  the  household  of  the  Datario 
Ghiberti,  and  years  afterward  Achilles,  on  trial  for  an- 
other deadly  assault,  confessed  the  deed.  It  was  taken 
for  granted  by  all  Rome  that  the  master  had  ordered  the 
servant  to  avenge  the  insults  of  Aretino,  an  accusation 
which  Ghiberti,  years  afterward,  when  Bishop  of  Verona, 
solemnly  denied  in  a  letter  to  the  Marquis  of  Mantua. 

All  Pietro's  efforts  to  get  his  enemy  punished  were 
vain.  Achilles  remained  untouched  of  law  in  the  service 
of  the  Papal  Datario,  and  Pietro,  vowing  vengeance,  left 
Rome  for  the  camp  of  Giovanni  de'  Medici. 

Of  that  famous  captain  he  became  the  intimate  friend 
and  he  wrote  afterwards  that  the  great  soldier  swore 
to  make  him  lord  and  ruler  of  Arezzo  when  the  war  was 
over.  The  friendship  and  the  hopes  of  the  two  were  cut 
short  by  a  bullet  which  fatally  wounded  Giovanni,  Novem- 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  page  203. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  49 

her,  1526.    Aretino  has  described  the  death  of  his  friend 
and  patron  in  one  of  the  best  of  his  letters. 

"When  the  hour  drew  near,  which  the  fates,  with  the 
consent  of  God,  had  fixed  as  the  end  of  our  Master,  His 
Highness  was  attacking  with  his  usual  terrible  force 
Governo  around  which  the  enemy  had  entrenched  them- 
selves, and  while  thus  engaged  a  musket  ball  broke  the  leg 
which  was  already  wounded  by  an  arquebus.  As  soon 
as  he  felt  the  blow,  fear  and  melancholy  fell  on  the  army 
and  joy  and  ardor  died  in  all  hearts.  Everybody  forgot 
himself  and  in  thinking  of  the  occurrence  wept,  complain- 
ing of  fate  for  having  so  senselessly  brought  to  death  the 
noblest  and  most  excellent  general  in  the  memory  of  cen- 
turies, at  the  very  beginning  of  more  than  human  achieve- 
ments and  in  the  midst  of  Italy's  greatest  need.  The 
captains  who  followed  him  with  love  and  veneration, 
blaming  fortune  and  his  temerity  for  their  loss,  spoke  of 
age  ripened  to  bear  fatigue  sufficient  for  every  undertaking 
and  apt  for  every  difficulty.  They  sighed  over  the  great- 
ness of  his  thoughts  and  the  wildness  of  his  valour,  they 
could  not  control  their  voices  in  remembering  the  good 
fellowship  which  made  them  his  companions  and  not  for- 
getting his  foresight  and  acuteness,  they  warmed  with  the 
fire  of  their  complaints  the  snow  which  was  falling 
heavily  while  they  carried  him  to  Mantua.  *  *  * 
Then  the  Duke  of  Urbino  came  to  see  him  and  said,  seeing 
the  situation, — 'It  is  not  enough  for  you  to  be  great  and 
glorious  in  arms  if  you  do  not  also  distinguish  your  name 
by  religion  under  whose  sacraments  we  are  born.'  And 
he,  understanding  that  these  words  meant  the  last  confes- 
sion, answered, — 'As  I  have  done  my  duty  in  all  things, 


SO  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

if  need  is,  I  will  do  it  in  this  also.'  Then  when  he  went 
out  he  set  himself  to  talk  with  me,  calling  for  Sire  Antonio 
with  great  affection.  And  when  I  said  that  we  would 
send  for  him, — 'Do  you  want/  he  answered,  'a  man 
like  him  to  leave  the  field  of  war  to  see  sick  men  ?'  Then 
he  remembered  the  Count  of  San  Secondo,  saying, — 'I 
wish  he  were  here  to  take  my  place.'  Sometimes  he 
scratched  his  head  with  his  finger,  sometimes  he  laid 
it  on  his  lips,  saying, — 'What  will  happen?'  Often  re- 
peating,— 'I  have  nothing  to  repent  of.'  Then,  by  the 
wishes  of  the  doctors,  I  went  to  him  and  said, — 'It  would 
be  an  insult  to  your  soul  if  I  tried  to  persuade  you  that 
death  is  the  cure  of  ills,  made  heavy  only  by  our  fears. 
But  because  it  is  the  highest  happiness  to  do  everything 
with  free  will,  let  them  cut  off  the  leg  broken  by  the  artil- 
lery and  in  eight  days  you  will  be  able  to  make  of  Italy, 
now  a  slave,  a  queen.  And  your  lameness  will  serve  in- 
stead of  the  royal  order  you  have  always  refused  to  wear 
on  your  neck,  because  wounds  and  the  loss  of  limbs  are 
the  medals  of  the  friends  of  Mars.' 

"  'Let  them  do  it,'  he  answered  at  once.  At  this  mo- 
ment the  doctors  came  in  and  praising  the  firmness  of  his 
resolution,  ended  their  services  for  the  night  and,  after 
giving  him  medicine,  went  to  put  their  instruments  in 
order.  It  was  already  the  hour  to  eat  when  he  was 
taken  by  violent  nausea.  Then  he  said  to  me,  'The  sig- 
nals of  Caesar!  I  must  think  of  something  else  than  life.' 
And  with  hands  joined,  he  made  a  vow  to  go  to  the 
Apostle  of  Galatia.  But  when  the  time  was  come  and  the 
skillful  men  came  in  with  their  instruments,  they  asked 
for  eight  or  ten  assistants  to  hold  him  while  the  terrible 


PIETRO  ARETINO  51 

sawing  Iaste3.  He  smiled  and  said,  'Twenty  couldn't 
hold  me,'  got  ready  with  a  perfectly  calm  face,  took  the 
candle  in  his  hand  to  light  the  doctors  himself.  I  ran  out 
and  closing  my  ears  heard  only  two  cries, — and  then  he 
called  me.  When  I  came  to  him  he  said,  'I  am  cured,' 
and  turning  himself  all  around,  made  a  great  rejoicing 
about  it.  If  the  Duke  of  Urbino  had  not  stopped  him,  he 
would  have  made  them  bring  in  the  foot  with  the  pieces 
of  his  leg  to  look  at,  laughing  at  us  because  we  could  not 
bear  to  look  at  what  he  had  suffered.  And  his  sufferings 
were  far  greater  than  those  of  Alexander  and  Trajan 
who  kept  a  smiling  face  when  the  tiny  arrowhead  was 
pulled  out.  He  smiled  when  his  nerves  and  sinews  were 
cut. 

But  finally  the  pain  which  had  left  him  returned  two 
hours  before  day  with  all  sorts  of  torments.  I  heard  him 
knocking  hastily  on  the  wall  of  the  room.  The  sound 
stabbed  me  to  the  heart  and  getting  dressed,  in  an  instant 
I  ran  to  him.  As  soon  as  he  saw  me  he  commenced  to 
say  that  the  thought  of  cowards  gave  him  more  disgust 
than  pain,  trying  by  thus  gossiping  with  me  to  set  free  by 
disregarding  his  misfortunes  his  spirit  tangled  in  the 
snares  of  death.  But  as  day  dawned,  things  grew  so  much 
worse  that  he  made  his  will,  in  which  he  divided  many 
thousands  of  scudi  in  money  and  stuff  among  those  who 
had  served  him  and  left  only  four  julii  for  his  burial. 
The  Duke  was  executor.  Then  he  turned  in  most  Chris- 
tian mood  to  his  last  confession  and  seeing  the  friar  come, 
— 'Father,'  he  said,  'being  a  professor  of  arms  I  have 
lived  with  the  habits  of  soldiers  as  I  should  have  lived 
like  the  monks  if  I  had  put  on  the  dress  you  wear.  Were 


52  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

it  allowed  I  would  confess  before  everyone  for  I  have 
never  done  anything  unworthy  of  myself.'  At  last  he 
turned  to  me,  ordering  me  to  have  his  wife  send  Cosimo 
to  him.  At  that,  death  which  was  calling  him  to  the 
under  world  doubled  his  sadness.  Already  the  entire 
household  without  any  more  thought  of  the  respect  due 
to  rank,  swarmed  round  the  bed,  mingled  with  his  chief 
officers  and  shadowed  by  a  cold  melancholy,  wept  for  the 
living  hope  and  the  service  which  they  were  losing  with 
their  master,  each  trying  to  catch  his  eye  with  a  glance  of 
theirs  to  show  their  sorrow  and  love.  Thus  surrounded, 
he  took  the  hand  of  the  Duke,  saying,  'You  are  losing 
to-day  the  greatest  friend  and  the  best  servant  you  have 
ever  had.'  His  Excellency,  masking  his  face  and  tongue 
with  the  appearance  of  false  joy,  tried  to  make  him  believe 
he  would  get  well.  And  he  who  was  not  frightened  by 
death  even  when  he  was  certain  of  it,  began  to  talk  to  the 
Duke  about  the  result  of  the  war,  saying  things  which 
would  have  been  remarkable  if  he  had  been  in  full  health, 
instead  of  half  dead.  And  so  he  remained  working  with 
his  mind  until  almost  the  ninth  hour  of  the  night  of  the 
vigil  of  St.  Andrew.  And  because  his  suffering  was  very 
great  be  begged  me  to  put  him  to  sleep  by  reading  to  him. 
I  did  it  and  he  seemed  to  waste  away  from  sleep  to  sleep. 
At  last,  waking  after  fifteen  minutes'  dozing,  he  said,  'I 
dreamed  I  was  making  my  will  and  here  I  am  cured.  If 
I  keep  on  getting  better  like  this  I'll  teach  the  Germans 
how  to  make  war  and  show  them  how  I  avenge  myself.' 
Even  as  he  said  this  the  lamp  of  his  spirit  which  cheated 
his  eyes  began  to  yield  to  the  perpetual  darkness.  Where- 
fore of  his  own  accord  he  asked  for  the  Extreme  Unction, 


PIETRO  ARETINO  53 

Having  received  the  sacrament,  he  said,  'I  don't  want  to 
die  among  all  these  poultices.'  So  we  fixed  a  camp  bed 
and  put  him  on  it  and  there  while  his  mind  slept,  death 
took  him."  1 

"He  is  dead — a  force  of  nature.  He  is  finished — the 
example  of  antique  faith.  He  is  gone — the  right  arm  of 
battle."  2 

Aretino  seems  to  have  felt  this  loss  more  than  any- 
thing which  happened  to  him,  and  for  the  rest  of 
his  life  never  tired  of  praising  the  character  of  his  dead 
friend  and  patron. 

He  was  welcome  to  stay  with  his  old  admirer,  the  Mar- 
quis of  Mantua.  But  Federico  found  himself  much  em- 
barrassed by  his  guest's  quarrel  with  the  Pope  whom 
Aretino  ceaselessly  attacked  with  bitter  satires.  And  he 
had  found  for  them  a  new  and  striking  form.  The  belief 
in  astrology  was  very  common  among  all  classes  of  the 
day, — educated  and  uneducated.  For  at  least  thirty 
years  astrologers  had  issued  their  predictions  based  on  the 
conjunctions  of  the  planets;  about  the  weather,  the  har- 
vests, the  war,  the  governments  and  other  topics  of  inter- 
est. These  publications,  called  giudizi,  were  taken 
seriously  and  had  a  large  sale.  Aretino  conceived  the 
striking  idea  of  parodying  these  giudizi,  making  them  a 
comment  on  what  had  happened  spiced  with  satire  and 
witty  reflections.  This  gave  him  the  chance  of  telling  at 
once  the  scandals  of  the  day  and  his  opinions  on  them. 
Just  when  he  began  to  write  giudizi  we  cannot  tell. 
Until  very  recently  only  a  fragment  of  these  admired  pro- 
ductions was  known.  It  was  written  at  Mantua  and  en- 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  I,    5-9. 
'Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  10. 


54  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

titled  Giudizio  or  prognostic  of  Maestro  Pasquino,  the 
fifth  evangelist  for  the  year  1527.  To  the  Marquis  of 
Mantua  Pieto  Aretino.  The  stupidity  of  Guarico  (a 
noted  astrologer)  and  of  that  brute  who  is  with  Count 
Rangone  and  the  other  stupid  ribalds,  the  disgraces  of  the 
prophets,  have  made  me  this  year  turn  philosopher  to  the 
shame  of  the  stupid  flock  of  Abumasar  and  Ptolemy.  I 
have  composed  the  Giudizio  for  1527  and  I  will  not  be  a 
liar  like  the  above  mentioned  rascals  whose  smallest  and 
least  important  lie  was  the  flood,  etc.,  etc. 

Section  first.  Of  the  nature  of  the  atmosphere  and  the 
entries  of  the  sun  (into  the  zodiacal  signs). 

According  to  the  opinion  of  modern  interpreters  of  the 
planets,  for  instance  Zulian  Levi  and  Ceccotto  of  Genoa, 
the  entry  of  the  sun  will  be  into  the  first  tavern  he  shall 
find  and  he  will  come  out  drunk  at  the  end  of  eight  days 
at  the  meridian  of  your  horologe  of  Mantua.  The  atmos- 
phere will  be  very  apt  to  become  corrupt  by  the  breath  of 
Germans  gulping  Italian  wine,  etc.,  etc.1 

The  body  of  the  Giudizio,  which  is  lost,  was  evidently  a 
most  bitter  attack  on  the  Pope,  the  Cardinals  and  the 
Roman  court.  For,  in  April,  1527,  the  Mantuan  Ambas- 
sador wrote  from  Rome  to  the  Marquis  that  the  confessor 
of  the  Pope  reported  his  Holiness  much  offended  by  a 
little  book  of  Pietro  Aretino's  dedicated  to  the  Marquis 
and  full  of  evil  speaking,  especially  against  the  Pope  and 
the  Cardinals  and  other  prelates  of  this  court.  The  Am- 
bassador suggests  that  he  must  drive  Aretino  from  Man- 
tua. The  Marquis  could  not  afford  to  quarrel  with  the 

1  Quoted  from  MSS.  by  I«uzio,  Pietro  Aretino  nei  primi  suoi  anni,  etc., 
pages. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  55 

Pope.  He  answered  that  although  he  had  taken  pleasure 
in  some  of  Aretino's  writings,  he  had  never  been  pleased 
to  have  him  write  against  the  Pope  and  the  prelates  of 
the  church.  As  soon  as  he  understood  the  blackguardly 
mind  of  Aretino  he  had  told  him  to  leave  the  court  and 
had  given  him  money  and  other  gifts  only  to  avoid  ap- 
pearing mean.  If  this  was  not  enough  His  Holiness  had 
but  to  give  him  the  word  quietly,  or  otherwise  express  a 
wish  that  it  should  be  done,  and  he  would  settle  Aretino 
for  good  and  all.  If  he  escaped  from  other  hands  he 
could  not  escape  his  and  he  would  manage  it  in  such  a 
way  that  no  one  would  know  who  did  it.1 

Whether  the  Marquis  of  Mantua  was  lying  to  the  Pope 
in  saying  that  he  despised  Aretino's  writings  and  was 
ready  to  have  him  assassinated  if  His  Holiness  wished  it, 
or  whether  he  was  lying  to  Aretino  in  his  expressions  of 
esteem,  is  difficult  to  say.  At  all  events,  twenty-four 
days  after  he  sent  the  above  dispatch  to  Rome,  he  sent  a 
letter  to  Aretino  at  Venice  in  which,  among  other  com- 
pliments, he  wrote, — "Very  willingly  I  have  done  you  the 
favour  to  look  over  again  your  Giudizio,  although  I  had 
re-read  it  before  and  I  find  that  it  is  the  most  truthful 
Giudizio  which  has  been  uttered  for  many  years  and  that 
you  are  the  best  astrologer  there  is.  *  *  *  I  shall 
expect  now  in  recognition  of  this  favour  that  you  will 
keep  the  promise  you  made  to  send  me  whatever  comes 
from  your  fine  mind  as  I  beg  you  to  do,  because  no  greater 
pleasure  could  be  given  me,  and  your  writings  are  the 
merriest  things  I  come  across." 

1  Luzio,  P.  A.  nei  primi  suoi  anni,  Documento  II.  Quoted  here  in  summary 
form. 


56  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Aretino  arrived  in  Venice  a  fugitive  with  a  hundred 
scudi  in  his  pocket  in  March,  1527,  and  lived  there  for 
twenty-nine  years  a  life  of  honour,  splendour  and  fame, — 
a  political  force  courted  by  all,  a  celebrity  of  Venice, — 
visited  by  distinguished  strangers, — the  flattered  corre- 
spondent of  the  leading  artists  and  litterateurs  and  their 
noble  patrons.  There  was  talk  at  one  time  of  making 
him  a  cardinal.1  If  this  had  been  done,  no  literary  man 
of  his  day  would  have  received  larger  material  rewards 
or  had  a  more  triumphant  success. 

Of  this  successful  life  and  of  his  own  character  we 
have  a  most  vivid  and  truthful  record  in  eight  hundred 
and  sixteen  letters  to  Aretino  and  thirty-one  hundred  and 
seventy-five  from  him,  all  printed  during  his  lifetime.  In 
those  five  thousand  pages  one  can  see  the  reflection  of  the 
man  and  the  times. 

In  Venice  he  found  the  home  which  suited  his  tastes. 
He  was  never  tired  of  praising  the  charms  of  life  in  "The 
crown  and  beauty  of  the  world."  "Venice  impress  of  the 
joyful  soul  of  wonderful  and  foreseeing  Nature."  "Ven- 
ice alias  the  Terrestrial  Paradise." 

Venice  was  the  richest  and  largest  of  Italian  cities,  and 
the  only  one  free  from  foreign  control.  The  lines  of 
trade  were  indeed  changing.  Adventurous  ships  had 
traced  on  the  ocean  the  great  highroads  of  travel,  and  the 
centre  of  commerce  was  no  longer  at  the  head  of  the 
Adriatic.  It  was  moving  up  the  Atlantic  coast  toward 
the  delta  of  the  Rhine.  But  the  decline  of  Venice  was 
very  slow.  It  was  as  yet  scarcely  noticeable.  The  State 

1  Lctterc  al  Aretino  II,  No.  248.  Titian  wrote  from  Augsburg  that  the 
Emperor  talked  of  urging  his  name  upon  the  Pope  for  a  red  hat. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  57 

revenues  were  larger  than  those  of  the  English  Crown. 
The  citizens  were  prosperous,  and  out  of  a  population  of 
190,000  in  1585  there  were  only  187  beggars.  So  easy 
was  living  that,  by  the  middle  of  the  century,  citizens  could 
no  longer  be  found  to  man  the  galleys  and  they  must  be 
filled  with  aliens.  The  common  people  were  comfortable 
to  an  extent  unknown  elsewhere  in  Italy.  They  had  rugs 
for  the  floor,  good  beds  to  sleep  on,  pictures  on  the  walls, 
and  some  silver  pieces  for  the  well-spread  table. 

The  homes  of  the  Venetian  nobles  had  long  been  mag- 
nificent. In  the  early  fifteenth  century  a  traveller  wrote 
that  not  even  the  Queen  of  France  or  the  Duchess  of 
Milan  had  apartments  as  gorgeously  furnished  as  those 
of  a  Venetian  lady.  At  that  time  the  ships  unloaded  their 
cargoes  at  the  steps  of  the  palaces,  and  the  lower  rooms 
stored  the  merchandise  that  made  the  family  wealth. 
Bales  of  wool  and  rolls  of  silk  rested  unashamed  beneath 
the  banners  and  arms  won  by  noble  ancestors  in  glorious 
fight  with  the  Turk.  But  in  the  sixteenth  century  the 
eighteen  hundred  patricians,  leaving  trade  to  the  citizens, 
gave  themselves  to  the  cares  of  government  and  to  spend- 
ing the  wealth  laid  up  by  their  hard-working  forefathers. 

They  spent  it  in  princely  style.  It  was  traditional  in 
their  class  to  be  well  educated,  and  when  the  rude  English 
nobles  could  scarcely  read  and  write,  the  Venetian  patri- 
cians had  maintained  a  course  of  public  instruction  in 
philosophy  whose  chairs  must  all  be  filled  by  aristocrats. 
They  were  rapidly  building  the  hundred  palaces  which 
rose  on  the  banks  of  the  canals  during  that  sixteenth 
century  which  brought  into  being  most  of  the  Venice  we 
know;  for  about  half  of  the  buildings  mentioned  in  a 


58  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

modern  guide-book  were  erected  or  restored  in  the  six- 
teenth century.  Their  patronage  was  fostering  the  bloom 
of  artistic  power  that  made  Venice  succeed  Florence  and 
Rome  as  the  third  centre  of  the  art  of  the  Renascence.  At 
the  public  celebration  of  the  victory  of  Lepanto  in  1575, 
the  gates  of  the  Rialto  were  draped  in  gold,  blue,  and  red, 
and  decorated  with  trophies  of  Turkish  arms,  among 
which  the  city  displayed  as  its  most  precious  possessions 
pictures  of  Raphael,  Bellini,  Giorgione,  Michael  Angelo, 
Pordenone,  and  Titian. 

The  luxury  of  living  grew  steadily,  in  spite  of  laws 
passed  to  restrict  it  by  men  who  sighed  for  the  good  old 
times  when  generations  of  Venetian  seamen,  working  and 
fighting  hard  and  living  simply,  wrested  wealth  from  the 
sea  and  power  from  the  infidel.  Venice  gained  from 
Rome  the  reputation  of  being  the  centre  of  license  as 
well  as  art,  and  became  the  pander  of  the  visitors  who 
flocked  to  see  her  beauty. 

In  Italy  of  that  time  public  sentiment  was  deeply  de- 
praved. One  of  the  many  Italian  scholars  who,  in  these 
last  few  years,  have  been  doing  such  valuable  work  on 
the  Renascence,  says :  "It  is  now  a  banal  truism  .  .  . 
that  in  the  Italian  Renascence  the  concept  of  morality  un- 
derwent a  transformation  and  a  general  lowering  so  great 
that  it  requires  a  strong  effort  for  us  to  form  a  just  idea 
of  it."  1 

The  solid  reasons  on  which  this  judgment  rests  may 
be  indicated  by  two  examples :  Luzio  has  published  letters 
of  the  Marquis  of  Mantua  in  which  he  frankly  shows 

1  Cian,  Bembo,  page  180;  Virgili,  page  58,  speaks  of  "II  fango  ed  il  lezzo  di 
quei  tempi  d'oro." 


PIETRO  ARETINO  59 

willingness  to  render  the  most  infamous  service  to  Arett- 
no's  vices.  And  Molmenti  quotes  a  contemporary  who 
says  that  Alfonso  d'Este  was  called  a  virtuous  man,  be- 
cause he  let  other  men's  wives  alone  and  never  failed  to 
provide  dowries  and  husbands  for  the  young  girls  he 
ruined.1 

A  sense  of  shame  is  the  last  bulwark  against  vice  and 
the  standard  of  morality  is  always  higher  than  the  prac- 
tice. Nowhere  in  the  world  during  the  early  sixteenth 
century  was  this  very  high.  But  Italy  had  a  deserved 
distinction  in  evil.  Roger  Ascham  visited  Venice  five 
years  before  Pietro's  death.  His  judgment  may  have 
been  somewhat  coloured  by  religious  prejudice,  but  it 
will  bear  a  large  reduction  without  being  much  weakened. 
It  is  expressed  in  language  a  little  too  virile  to  be  quoted 
entire  in  days  when  indignation  is  less  frank,  but  the 
gist  of  it  is  in  these  two  sentences :  "I  was  once  in  Italy 
myself;  but  I  thank  God  my  abode  there  was  but  nine 
days.  And  yet  I  saw  in  that  little  time  in  one  city  more 
liberty  to  sin  than  ever  I  heard  tell  of  in  our  noble  city  of 
London  in  nine  years."  2 

It  is  not  possible  to  find  in  modern  literature  pictures 
of  a  society  moving  on  as  low  a  level  of  moral  judgment  as 
that  on  which  the  heroes  of  the  popular  Italian  novelists 
of  the  sixteenth  century  show  their  heroes  and  heroines. 
Social  custom  did  not  exact  from  vice  even  the  tribute  of 
concealment  or  hypocrisy. 

Aretino  had  no  quarrel  with  this  depraved  moral  judg- 
ment Indeed  it  did  not  seem  to  him  depraved,  but  just 

1  Molmenti,  page  287. 

•Ascham,  The  Schoolmaster,  about  the  middle  of  the  treatise. 


60  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

and  natural.  Like  most  men  of  this  day  he  would  have 
smiled  with  indulgent  pity  at  a  higher  standard  of  con- 
duct as  the  dream  of  an  idealist  ignorant  of  what  happens. 
Boccaccio  had  expressed  the  base  of  a  depraved  literature 
and  a  depraved  life  in  the  conclusion, — the  same  conclu- 
sion assumed  in  that  extraordinary  series  of  erotomaniac 
romances  to  which  so  many  masters  of  French  prose  have 
in  our  day  given  their  pens — that  man  cannot  resist  his 
passions.  Aretino  writes  in  one  of  his  letters, — "It  is  in 
the  power  of  few  or  rather  of  none,  to  resist  the  assaults 
of  lust  or  of  anger.  Wherefore,  every  unfortunate  occur- 
rence produced  by  one  or  the  other  of  these  passions 
ought  to  be  forgiven."  * 

Let  it  be  said  then,  once  for  all,  that  the  life  of  Aretino, 
so  picturesque,  so  joyous,  so  adorned  with  the  pleasures  of 
literature  and  art,  was  frankly  disorderly,  based  on  Turk- 
ish morals,  or  rather  on  morals  worse  than  Turkish,  for 
he  lacked  none  of  the  vices  of  the  East  and  his  harem  was 
irregular  and  temporary.  This  viciousness  was  not  in  the 
least  concealed.  We  know  of  it  chiefly  from  the  allu- 
sions and  accounts  of  the  collection  of  letters  he  himself 
printed,  and  in  two  of  them  he  has  frankly  and  brutally 
defended  and  recommended  such  a  life.2 

This  disorder  was  thrown  in  Aretino's  teeth  by  his 
assailants.  But  neither  their  reproaches  nor  its  notoriety 
diminished  the  tribute  of  respect  paid  to  him  in  Venice 
and  out  of  it  by  all  classes  of  society,  including  popular 
preachers,  prelates  of  the  church  and  ladies  of  the  most 
distinguished  families.  It  did  not  prevent  honourable 

1  Aretino,  I,ettere,  I,  fol.  192. 
•Aretino,  I.ettere,  I,  105-259. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  61 

women  from  sending  him  wine,  preserved  peaches,  and 
beautiful  embroideries,  nor  stop  a  blue  stocking  of  unre- 
proachable  reputation  like  Veronica  Gambara  from  writ- 
ing the  most  flattering  letters  or  celebrating  his  love  in  a 
sonnet.1 

Within  two  years  of  his  arrival  in  Venice,  Pietro  moved 
into  a  house  on  the  Grand  Canal  close  to  the  Rialto  in  the 
very  centre  of  the  life  of  the  city.     In  a  letter  to  its  noble 
owner,   Domenico   Bolani,   he   describes   it, — "I   should 
seem,  most  honoured  Sir,  guilty  of  ingratitude  if  I  did 
not  pay  with  praise  a  part  of  what  I  owe  to  the  divine  site 
where  your  house  is  built.     I  live  there  with  the  greatest 
pleasure  in  life  because  it  is  placed  in  a  position  which 
could  not  be  improved  by  being  moved  up  or  down  or  in 
any  other  direction.     To  undertake  the  theme  of  its 
merits  is  as  difficult  as  it  is  to  write  about  the  Emperor. 
Certainly  the  man  who  built  it  chose  the  best  side  of  the 
Grand  Canal.  And  because  it  is  the  patriarch  of  all  streets, 
and  Venice  the  popess  of  all  cities,  I  can  truthfully  say 
that  I  enjoy  the  prettiest  street  and  pleasantest  view  in 
the  world.     I  cannot  go  to  the  window  during  business 
hours  without  seeing  a  thousand  persons  and  as  many 
gondolas.     On  the  right  hand  I  have  the  piazzas  of  the 
beccaria  and  the  fish  market  and  the  Campo  del  Mancino, 

1  Preachers — Vergerio,  Cerolamo  d'Este,  Fra  Tommaso,  Bernardo  of  Brescia, 
Aretino  Lettere.  Prelates — It  will  be  enough  to  cite  the  Cardinals  of  Ravenna, 
Mantua,  Urbino,  the  Archbishop  of  Palermo,  the  Bishops  of  Casale,  Lucera, 
Vercelli.  Lettere  a  Pietro  Aretino.  Ladies — Contessa  di  Monte  Labate,  Duchessa 
d'Urbino,  Camilla  and  Ludovica  Pallavicina,  I/udovica  San  Sevino,  etc.  Ca- 
milla Pallavicina  had  his  illegitimate  daughter  for  a  visit  and  sent  her  home 
with  a  gold  chain. 

Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  143. 

Veronica  Gambara.    Lettere  al  Aretino,  I,  page  318  ff. 

"Serena  will  be  with  Beatrice  and  Laura  eternal  in  the  circle  of  Heaven." 


62  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  bridge  and  the  House  of  German  merchants.     Oppo- 
site both  there  is  the  Rialto  crowded  with  business  men. 

******** 
"I  do  not  care  to  see  streams  which  water  the  meadows 
when  at  dawn  I  can  look  at  the  water  covered  at  the  sea- 
son with  everything  that  grows.  It  is  very  amusing  when 
the  farmers  distribute  their  great  loads  of  fruit  and  green 
stuff  to  those  who  carry  them  where  they  are  to  go.  But 
that  is  nothing  compared  to  the  twenty  or  twenty-five  sail- 
ing boats  filled  with  melons  gathered  together  in  a  little 
island,  while  the  crowd  runs  around  testing  the  perfection 
of  the  fruit  by  smelling  and  weighing  it.  I  don't  speak 
of  the  pretty  wives  shining  with  silk,  gold  and  jewelry 
standing  proudly  in  the  boats.  *  *  *  And  who 
would  not  have  died  laughing  to  see,  as  I  and  the 
famous  Giulio  Camillo  did,  a  bark  filled  with  Germans 
just  come  out  of  the  tavern  upset  on  a  very  cold  day. 
*  *  *  And  that  nothing  may  be  lacking  to  complete 
my  view,  on  one  side  I  am  charmed  by  the  orange  trees 
touching  with  gold  the  foundations  of  the  palace  of  the 
Camerlinghi  and  on  the  other  by  the  canal  and  bridge  of 
San  Giovanni.  The  winter  sun  never  rises  without 
first  giving  notice  at  my  bedside,  in  my  study,  my 
kitchen,  my  rooms  and  dining-hall.  *  *  *  I  must 
not  forget  the  lights  which  after  dark  seem  like  scattered 
stars,  where  the  things  we  use  for  our  dinners  and  ban- 
quets are  sold,  or  the  music  which  at  night  comes  to  my 
ears  with  its  concord  of  harmonious  sounds.  It  would 
be  easier  to  express  the  profound  wisdom  which  you 
possess  for  letters  and  politics  than  to  come  to  the  end  of 
the  pleasures  I  find  in  my  view.  And  if  there  is  any 


PIETRO  ARETINO  63 

breath  or  spirit  of  genius  in  the  rubbish  I  write,  it  is  in- 
spired not  by  the  air  nor  the  shadows  nor  the  flowers  nor 
the  Summer  green,  but  by  the  airy  felicity  of  this  habita- 
tion of  yours,  in  which  I  hope,  God  willing,  to  count  with 
health  and  vigour  the  full  tale  of  years  which  a  good  fel- 
low ought  to  live."  * 

Aretino  was  so  much  pleased  with  his  house  that  he 
refused  almost  all  the  pressing  invitations  which  came  to 
him  to  visit  France  and  various  courts  of  Italy.  He  sel- 
dom left  it  except  for  a  couple  of  weeks  in  the  summer 
when  he  went  to  Gambarara,  a  few  miles  off  on  the  main- 
land. And  when  he  had  to  move,  near  the  end  of  his 
life,  he  simply  crossed  the  canal  to  the  other  bank. 

His  house  was  always  full  of  servants,  parasites  and 
visitors,  and  the  table  was  seldom  spread  for  less  than  a 
score  of  persons.  The  rooms  were  decorated  with  pic- 
tures, statues  and  frescoes  of  friends  like  Titian,  Tinto- 
retto, Sansovino,  Vasari,  and  he  had  choice  glass-ware 
of  Murano,  specimen  Majolicas,  wood  carvings  of  Tasso, 
medals  and  silver-ware  of  Leone  Leoni,  oriental  hangings 
and  tapestries.2  He  was  fond  of  magnificent  dresses. 
One  of  his  costumes  was  a  robe  of  black  velvet  ornamented 
with  gold  cords  with  the  lining  of  cloth  of  gold,  and  a  long 
gown  and  jerkin  of  velvet.  Another  given  by  the  Duke 
of  Mantua  was  a  gown  of  ermisine  trimmed  with  em- 
broidered black  velvet  and  lined  with  pure  white  fox  skins 
and  a  simare  of  black  satin.  He  received  as  presents 
many  gold  chains.  One  from  the  King  of  France 
weighed  eight  pounds.  His  letters  abound  with  thanks 

iAretino,  Lettere,  I,  169. 
"Aretino,  Lettere,  passim. 


64  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

for  such  things  as  "white  satin  stockings  wrought  in 
gold,"  "green  silk  caps,"  "a  flesh  coloured  jerkin  em- 
broidered with  silver  cords  and  trimmed  with  ermine." 
A  list  of  his  presents  would  be  a  catalogue  of  splendid 
stuffs,  embroideries  and  jewels,  enough  to  furnish  the 
wardrobe  of  a  small  theatre. 

But  in  spite  of  this  apparatus  of  luxury  there  was  noth- 
ing really  aristocratic  about  the  life  of  Aretino.  The 
house  was  filled  with  confusion,  robbed  secretly  by  the 
servants,  plundered  openly  by  its  disorderly  guests.1 
When  a  present  of  wine  arrived  friends  and  neighbours 
crowded  in  to  drink  it  up.  He  could  not  hide  the  shirts 
or  fine  stockings  sent  him  so  that  the  women  of  the  house 
would  not  steal  them.2  When  he  received  a  dozen  rosa- 
ries he  had  ordered,  he  describes  with  great  humour  how 
the  whole  "troop  of  his  band"  gathered  "like  hungry 
hens  picking  at  a  piece  of  bread,  admiring,  discussing, 
choosing  until  midnight."  And  he  begs  his  friend  if  he 
loves  him  and  wants  him  to  escape  alive  to  send  six  more 
of  garnet  so  that  all  may  be  satisfied.3 

Aretino  was  lavishly  kind  to  the  poor  and  exceedingly 
hospitable.  If  he  heard  of  any  one  sick  he  sent  a  doctor. 
He  often  paid  the  rent  for  those  about  to  be  turned  out  of 
their  home.  He  visited  prisoners  and  his  purse  was 
open  to  young  men  going  out  into  the  world  to  try  their 
fortunes.  Those  who  knew  him  said  he  would  take  the 
shirt  off  his  back  to  give  to  a  friend  in  need.  He  did  not 
hide  the  light  of  his  good  deeds  under  a  bushel.  But 

i  Aretino,  Lettere,  I.  29,  II,  131-134, 
'Aretino,  Letters,  I,  86. 
'Aretino,  Lettcre,  HI,  68, 


PIETRO  ARETINO  65 

ceaseless  braggart  as  he  is,  there  is  little  reason  to  believe 
him  a  liar  and  the  above  picture  of  his  charity  is  painted 
not  with  his  own  words  but  with  those  of  his  intimates.1 
His  friend  and  publisher  Francesco  Marcolini  tells  two 
good  stories  of  the  way  his  kindness  and  hospitality  were 
imposed  upon.     The  first  is  of  an  "excellent  scoundrel 
who  came  and  told  you  that  a  certain  respectable  young 
girl  who  had  formerly  been  a  neighbour  of  yours  was 
dead  and  got  from  your  purse  the  money  to  bury  her. 
And  when  a  few  days  afterward  the  poor  brother  of  the 
said  young  woman  came  to  ask  your  help  to  find  her  a 
husband  and  a  marriage  portion,  before  he  opened  his 
mouth  you  ran  to  meet  him  with  open  arms  tenderly  sor- 
rowing with  him  over  his  sister's  death.    But  the  young 
fellow,  all  taken  aback,  answered,  'Signore,  if  she  hasn't 
died  within  the  half  hour,  she  is  living  and  well.'    And 
since  you  would  not  believe  it,  he  was  obliged  to  go  and 
bring  his  sister  to  your  house  with  scarcely  clothes  enough 
to  cover  her.    She  left  it  very  well  dressed  and  with  the 
promise  of  a  marriage  portion  to  find  her  a  husband." 
The  second  story  is  a  comment  on  "the  continual  hospi- 
tality of  your  house  which  is  so  open  to  everybody  that  the 
mistake  of  the  party  of  strangers  in  Venice  made  on  the 
first  of  May,  1532,  is  not  to  be  wondered  at.     They  took 
your  house  for,  what  in  one  sense  it  is,  a  tavern;  espe- 
cially when  they  saw  so  many  people  come  out  boasting 
of  having  drunk  the  best  wine  in  Venice.     And  so  they 
went  up  stairs  and  took  their  places  at  the  table,  saying, — 
'Bring  us  a  salad.'     Having  been  served  with  it  and 

1I<ettere  al  Aretino,  II,  part  2,  page  352,  and  elsewhere. 


66  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

everything  else  they  asked  for  and  ready  to  go,  they 
called  your  Mazzone,  who  because  he  is  young,  good  look- 
ing, white  faced,  tall,  fat,  merry  and  of  pleasant  humour, 
they  took  to  be  the  host.  But  when  he  was  asked  by  one 
of  the  good  fellows  'What  was  the  bill  for  supper?'  the 
good  Mazzone,  understanding  that  he  was  being  treated 
as  if  he  was  an  inn-keeper,  got  ready  to  give  him  a  thrash- 
ing. At  last,  from  the  sound  cursing  that  you  gave  them, 
accompanied  by  four  or  five  blows,  the  merry  gallants 
recognized  that  you  must  be  the  owner  of  the  house  and 
not  the  gentleman  stopping  at  an  inn  for  whom  they  had 
taken  you.  And  when  the  good  fellows  understood  that 
having  supped  like  emperors  it  was  not  going  to  cost 
them  anything  but  hearty  thanks  and  good  wishes,  they 
were  full  of  bows  and  compliments  to  you  and  went  off 
roaring  with  laughter."  * 

This  open  house  of  a  royal  good  fellow  in  luck  exactly 
suited  Aretino,  for  his  taste  in  art,  his  love  of  rich  clothes 
and  his  easy-going  kindness  were  mingled  at  once  with 
the  habits  of  a  dissolute  Bohemian  and  the  likings  of  a 
cockney.  He  writes  that  it  is  a  fixed  habit  with 
him  never  to  spend  more  than  a  week  in  the 
country,  otherwise  it  becomes  a  terrible  bore.2  No  pleas- 
ures of  summer,  he  says,  are  "worth  a  single  bite  of  bread 
dipped  in  oil  eaten  around  the  December  fire  when  one 
sits  drinking  several  cups  of  new  wine,  picking  off  bits 
from  the  roast  turning  on  the  spit  and  not  caring  if  he 
does  burn  mouth  and  fingers  in  the  theft."  And  there  is 
a  strain  of  sincere  pleasure  in  the  letter  he  writes  to  a 

1  L«ttere  al  Aretino,  II,  part  2,  page  355. 
'Aretino,  Lcttere.  I,  145. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  67 

friend  praising  him  for  being  careless  of  all  the  splen- 
dours of  the  world  and  acting  his  own  servant.  "How 
pleasant  it  is  when  you  come  back  at  night  to  the  little 
shelter  fitted  for  the  condition  you  have  been  wise  enough 
to  choose  in  order  to  escape  the  grumbling  of  a  wife,  who 
is  as  apt  to  be  just  as  cross  when  one  comes  home  too  early 
as  when  one  comes  home  too  late.  If  the  hot  coals 
covered  with  ashes  are  not  out,  a  sulphur  taper  lights  the 
lamp.  If  they  have  burnt  out  just  call  to  your  neighbour 
and  she  will  hand  you  out  of  the  window  a  brand  or  a  bit 
of  live  coal  on  the  little  fire  shovel.  While  the  faggot 
blazes  up  you  stand  humming  a  tune  until  you  begin  to 
feel  hungry.  Then  you  settle  with  your  back  to  the  fire 
and  peg  away  with  a  fisherman's  appetite  at  the  salad 
you  dress  and  the  sausage  you  roast,  drinking  big  draughts 
without  any  fear  that  the  confounded  household  will  make 
wry  faces  behind  you.  Then  going  back  to  the  fire  you 
watch  your  shadow  which  gets  up  when  you  do  and  sits 
down  with  you, — in  short,  is  a  most  polite  companion. 
Meantime,  you  swap  stories  with  the  cat.  *  *  * 
When  you  get  sleepy  you  say  good-night  to  yourself  and 
jump  into  bed,  made  perhaps  twice  a  month  by  your  own 
hands  and  saying  the  Ave  Maria  and  the  Pater  Noster  and 
crossing  yourself  (you  don't  need  any  other  prayers  be- 
cause the  man  who  has  no  family  has  no  sins),  you 
fasten  your  head  so  tight  to  the  pillow  that  thunder  would 
have  to  do  more  than  its  best  to  wake  you.  In  the  morn- 
ing you  get  up  and  enjoy  the  pleasures  of  your  pleasant 
art ;  you  wait  until  a  little  omelette  claims  your  attention, 
and  shaking  out  the  table  cloth  and  putting  it  on  the  table, 
always  at  hand  and  always  guarded  by  the  jug  of  wine 


68  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ever  ready  to  make  love  to  you,  you  eat  to  live  instead  of 
living  to  eat.  Then  you  take  a  stroll  for  as  long  as  you 
like.  *  *  *  You  buy  a  little  fish  brought  in  fresh  at 
the  moment  by  the  fishermen,  or  a  little  capon  or  chicken 
to  keep  Easter  and  the  feasts,  not  forgetting  a  goose  for 
All  Saints'  Day.  *  *  *  In  Summer  you  are  satisfied 
with  plums,  a  dozen  figs,  a  bunch  of  grapes.  And  you 
venture  buying  a  melon,  heavy,  small  and  covered  with 
bloom.  When  you  get  home  with  it,  fresh  water  on  the 
table,  you  put  the  wine  bottle  into  the  well  bucket  and  at 
almost  the  same  moment  plunge  your  nose  and  your  knife 
into  the  melon.  Finding  it  sweet  and  delicious  you  have 
the  pleasure  of  a  pope  *  *  *."  1 

In  spite  of  this  praise  of  a  simple  life,  Aretino  was  very 
fond  of  the  pleasures  of  an  elaborate  table.  But  not  in  a 
coarse  way.  The  traveller  who  passes  from  the  shores 
of  the  North  Sea  and  the  Baltic  to  the  Mediterranean  and 
the  Adriatic,  remarks  at  once  the  temperance  of  the 
Italian  as  compared  with  the  Teuton.  The  heavy  eating 
and  drinking  of  England  and  Germany  struck  the  Italian 
traveller  of  the  Renascence  with  disgust.  While  the 
letters  of  Aretino  suggest  the  epicure  they  do  not  show 
him  as  either  drunkard  or  glutton.  They  are  filled  with 
thanks  for  presents  of  delicacies  or  allusions  to  little  im- 
promptu suppers,  but  there  is  nothing  gross  or  selfish  in 
this  talk  about  food  and  drink.  On  the  contrary,  Aretino 
felt  instinctively  that  subtle  civilizing  influence  of  the 
table  which  Balzac  has  pointed  out.  It  was  to  him  a  sym- 
bol of  the  pleasures  of  taste  and  sense  refined  by  common 
enjoyment — a  pledge  of  friendship — a  centre  of  cultivated 

1Arctino,  Lettere,  II,  27. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  69 

companionship.  His  imagination  or  his  wit  is  quick  to 
play  about  what  he  eats.  Writing  of  the  pleasures  of  a 
visit  to  his  native  Arezzo,  he  says  he  "never  has  a  large 
appetite  except  when  he  remembers  the  cheeses,  the  ham, 
the  sausages,  the  olives,  the  mushrooms,  the  ragouts,  the 
salads  and  the  jokes  doubling  the  savour  of  these  good 
things  of  the  Reverend  Canons  Capuiciuoli  and  Bond." 
And  he  adds,  "My  benedictions  would  have  doubled  the 
praises  of  the  peasant  woman  who  made  the  cates  sent  me, 
if  their  delayed  arrival  had  permitted  me  to  taste  them; 
nevertheless,  the  fact  that  they  were  spoiled  does  not  make 
me  any  less  obliged  for  them."  1 

"In  spite  of  my  fever,"  he  writes,  "I  could  not  help 
tasting  two  of  the  peaches  you  sent.  Certainly  the  peach 
is  a  fruit  which  appeals  to  the  heart.  When  I  see  it  be- 
side a  good  melon,  moved  by  their  charm,  I  feel  the  same 
pleasure  which  my  eyes  would  have  in  seeing  a  king  and 
queen  together."  2  When  Marc  Antonio  Veniero  sent 
him  "two  little  calves,  some  big  cheeses  and  good  bologna 
sausages,"  he  is  delighted,  "not  because  they  will  furnish 
his  table,  but  because  man  naturally  rejoices  at  seeing  an 
abundance  of  food."  3  A  present  of  fruit  makes  him  think 
of  the  Villa  of  Coreggio  whose  garden  bore  them — so 
beautiful — "that  if  the  world  liked  to  carry  flowers  it 
would  carry  it  always  for  a  carnation."  * 

"Instead  of  one  'thank  you',  for  a  good  fellow  which  I 
should  have  given  you  for  sending  the  mushrooms  I  am 
still  waiting  for,  I  ought  to  give  you  ten  for  sending  me 

*  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  243. 

*  Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  62. 
'Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  86. 
•Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  124. 


70  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  quails  and  thrushes  I  did  not  expect.  Because  they 
are  safer  eating  than  those  dangerous  things,  and  one 
cooks  them  in  a  couple  of  turns  of  the  spit,  where  they  are 
sandwiched  between  leaves  of  laurel  and  country  sausages. 
But  you  can't  do  that  with  mushrooms,  for  you  must  boil 
them  with  two  chunks  of  the  inside  of  a  loaf  of  bread,  and 
then  fry  them  in  oil.  And  then  too  one  ought  to  be  chary 
of  eating  them  except  in  the  morning,  for  fear  of  poison, 
which  could  so  entrench  itself  during  the  night, — thanks 
to  sleep, — as  to  be  able  to  put  to  rout  their  excellencies, 
the  physicians.  The  Chietini  (pietists)  understand  this 
very  well  for  they  confess  and  take  communion  before 
they  swallow  a  mouthful  of  them.  It  amuses  me  when  a 
greedy  and  timid  man  wants  to  stuff  himself  with  them. 
And  I  smile  to  see  his  nervous  antics  when  at  the  same 
moment  fear  and  the  savour  of  the  mushrooms  attack  his 
heart  and  his  nose."  * 

He  confesses  a  great  weakness  for  salads.  In  a  letter 
humorously  defending  himself  against  a  mock  charge  of 
gluttony,  he  admits, — "If  one  sins  in  devouring  a  whole 
salad  with  an  onion,  I  am  undone  because  there  is  in  that 
dish  a  delicate  pleasure  which  the  kitchen  hawks  that 
flocked  around  the  table  of  Leo  didn't  have."  2  And  it  is 
about  the  dressing  of  salad  that  he  writes  one  of  the  best 
of  his  lighter  letters. 

"As  soon,  my  brother,  as  your  tribute  of  salad  greens 
began  to  decline,  turning  my  imagination  to  astrology  and 
divination,  I  tried  to  find  out  the  reason  why  you  held  back 
the  regular  payment  of  food  to  my  appetite.  But  if  I 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  166. 
*Aretino,  Lcttcrc,  I,  146. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  71 

had  squeezed  my  thoughts  in  the  press  which  makes  oil 
out  of  olives,  I  never  could  have  found  out  that  you  have 
stopped  giving  me  this  supply  because  of  the  citronella 
which  pleases  your  palate  as  much  as  it  displeases  mine. 
Who  can  say  whence  quarrels  come — they  come  even  from 
two  stalks  of  that  herb  you  cannot  help  sending  me  and 
I  cannot  stop  throwing  away.  What  the  devil !  I  think 
I'll  become  one  of  those  who  don't  drink  wine  or  eat 
melons,  since  you  stop  sending  the  scraps  from  your  table 
to  a  good  comrade  all  on  account  of  a  herb,  yellow  as  an 
old  woman,  which  flaunts  in  all  gardens. 

"Have  you  used  it  for  some  enchantment  that  you  take 
its  part  so  strongly  ?  Hereafter  I  want  to  accustom  my- 
self to  eat  it  and  I  hope  to  do  so.  For  I  have  got  used  to 
being  without  a  penny  in  my  pocket — a  far  harder  thing 
than  opening  the  mouth  and  swallowing,  so  go  on  sending 
me  the  tax  your  courtesy  has  laid  on  yourself.  *  *  * 

"I  notice  the  way  you  lessen  the  sour  of  one  herb  with 
the  sweetness  of  another.  And  it  is  no  small  art  to  tem- 
per the  bitter  and  the  sharp  of  some  leaves  with  the  neutral 
flavor  of  others — making  the  mixture  so  dulcet  that  satiety 
itself  would  taste.  *  *  *  The  flowers  scattered  in 
the  delicate  green  of  such  appetite-sharpeners  tempt  my 
nose  to  smell  them  and  my  hand  to  take  them.  In  short, 
if  my  servants  knew  how  to  dress  your  salads  a  la  Genoese, 
I  would  give  up  for  them  the  breasts  of  capercailzie 
which  very  often  at  dinner  or  supper  Titian,  the  unique, 
gives  me  for  the  glory  of  Cadore.  *  *  *  Certainly  I 
am  astonished  that  the  poets  don't  strain  every  nerve  to 
sing  the  virtues  of  mixed  salad.  And  it  is  a  great  mis- 
take of  the  monks  and  nuns  not  to  praise  it,  because  the 


72  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

monks  steal  time  from  their  prayers  to  keep  the  soil  of 
their  lettuce-beds  free  from  little  stones.  And  the  nuns 
tend  it  like  a  baby,  wasting  hour  after  hour  in  watering 
and  caring  for  it.  *  *  * 

"I  believe  that  the  inventor  of  such  a  delicacy  was  a 
Florentine.  He  must  have  been,  because  the  arranging 
of  a  table,  decorating  it  with  roses,  washing  the  glasses, 
putting  plums  in  the  ragouts,  dipping  cup-up  liver  in 
batter,  making  black  pudding,  and  serving  fruit  after  a 
meal,  all  came  from  Florence.  Their  brains,  active,  al- 
ways working,  with  the  subtlety  of  their  foresight  have 
grasped  all  the  points  with  which  the  cuisine  can  charm 
the  sated  palate. 

"And  to  conclude  I  acknowledge  that  the  good  name  of 
citronella  is  excepted  from  my  dislike  for  it.  And  for 
that  reason  I  hope  that  tomorrow  will  be  the  beginning 
of  my  restoration  to  the  favour  of  your  garden.  And 
inform  the  dead  man's  rue  that,  although  I  am  the  head 
of  the  party  of  mixed  salads,  with  plenty  of  oil  and  lots 
of  vinegar  sharp  enough  to  split  the  rocks,  I  would 
revolt  from  them  if  you  should  compel  me  just  to  take  a 
whiff  of  it."  1 

Aretino's  most  intimate  table  companions  were  Titian 
and  Sansovino.  A  couple  of  the  many  allusions  of  the 
letters  will  show  this  sufficiently.  He  writes  to  the  Cava- 
liere  da'  Porto:  "Sansovino  and  Titian,  the  reputation 
of  marble  and  the  glory  of  colour,  since  the  first  with  the 
chisel  gives  to  marble  both  senses  and  spirit  and  the  second 
with  the  brush  gives  to  colour  both  senses  and  spirit — 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  178. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  73 

tfiey,  I  say,  enjoyed  with  me  the  two  pairs  of  red  par- 
tridges you  sent."  * 

He  wrote  to  Pigra :  "You  told  me  when  you  sent  the 
big  jar  filled  with  Ferrarese  finocchi,  'Eat  them  at  once 
with  your  friends,  because  I  am  keeping  some  more  for 
you/  That  being  so,  I  give  notice  that  Titian,  Sansovino, 
and  I,  after  having  enjoyed  the  first  lot,  are  waiting  to 
get  into  the  middle  of  the  second  lot  with  little  less  anx- 
iety than  the  cardinals  watch  around  a  pope's  bed  for  the 
hour  of  his  creeping  death."  2 

Of  the  two,  Titian  was  the  more  intimate.  Aretino 
spoke  of  him  as  his  other  self.  They  called  each  other 
"compare"  the  old  English  "gossip."  They  were  con- 
tinually at  table  together  in  the  house  of  one  or  the  other. 

Pietro  tells  Conte  Manfredo  di  Collalto :  "The  day  be- 
fore yesterday  we  were  eating  some  hares  caught  by  the 
hounds  which  Captain  Giovanni  Tiepoli  had  sent  me,  and 
while  their  praises  went  up,  cceli  ccelorum,  one  of  your 
lackeys  arrived  with  the  thrushes,  which  in  tasting  them 
made  me  chant  the  'inter  aves.'  They  were  so  good  that 
our  Titian,  seeing  and  smelling  them  on  the  spit,  glanced 
out  at  the  snow,  which,  while  they  were  setting  the  table, 
fell  in  showers,  and  abandoned  a  crowd  of  gentlemen  who 
had  arranged  a  dinner  for  him.  And  all  unanimously 
gave  great  praise  to  the  birds  with  the  long  beak,  which 
we  ate  with  a  little  smoked  meat,  a  couple  of  leaves  of 
laurel  and  pepper.  And  we  ate  them  for  love  of  you."  3 

Aretino  writes  that  he  took  refuge  at  Titian's   for 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  93. 
1  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  244. 
•Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  26. 


74 


RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 


luncheon  whenever  he  was  bored  by  too  many  visitors. 
And  the  grammarian  Priscianese  has  left  a  letter  describ- 
ing a  more  formal  banquet  at  the  painter's  house : 

"I  was  invited  the  day  of  the  Kalends  of  August  to 
celebrate  that  sort  of  holiday  which  is  called  'ferrare 
Agosto.'  I  don't  know  why  it  is  so  called,  although  it 
was  much  discussed  here  the  evening  I  spent  in  a  delight- 
ful garden  of  Messer  Tiziano  Vecellio,  as  everybody 
knows,  the  most  excellent  of  painters  and  a  person  truly 
fitted  to  ornament  by  his  agreeable  manners  the  best  cir- 
cles of  society.  There  were  met  together  with  the  said 
Messer  Tiziano,  for  like  always  draws  like,  some  of  the 
most  exquisite  men  of  talent  to  be  found  to-day  in  this 
city,  and  particularly  M.  Pietro  Aretino,  new  miracle  of 
nature.  Next  to  him  was  her  great  imitator  with  the  art 
of  the  chisel  as  the  master  of  the  feast  is  with  the  brush, 
Messer  Jacopo  Tatti,  called  Sansovino.  And  beside  them 
were  M.  Jacopo  Nardi  and  I ;  for  I  was  the  fourth  of  such 
an  able  company.  Because  the  sun,  in  spite  of  the  shade 
of  the  place,  made  its  power  felt,  we  passed  the  time  be- 
fore we  sat  down  to  table  in  looking  at  the  pictures  of  the 
most  excellent  painter,  of  which  the  house  was  full,  and 
in  talking  of  the  truly  beautiful  and  charming  garden, 
the  pleasure  and  wonder  of  all  who  see  it.  It  is  situated 
on  the  outer  edge  of  Venice,  upon  the  sea,  looking  out 
toward  the  lovely  little  island  of  Murano  and  other  most 
beautiful  places.  That  part  of  the  sea,  as  soon  as  the  sun 
went  down,  was  filled  with  a  thousand  gondolas,  orna- 
mented with  the  most  beautiful  women  and  ringing  with 
changing  harmonies  and  tones  of  voice  and  instrument, 
which  up  to  midnight  made  music  for  our  gay  supper. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  75 

"But  to  come  back  to  the  garden ;  it  was  so  well  arranged 
and  so  beautiful,  and  therefore  so  much  praised,  that  the 
comparison  which  occurred  to  me  with  the  delightful 
gardens  of  Saint  Agatha  quickened  so  much  my  memories 
and  desires  for  it  and  you,  dear  friends,  that  I  could  not 
tell  most  of  the  time  during  the  evening  whether  I  was 
in  Rome  or  in  Venice.  Meantime  the  hour  of  supper 
arrived.  It  was  as  beautifully  served  as  it  was  generous, 
and  furnished,  besides  the  most  delicate  food  and  most 
costly  wines,  with  all  those  pleasures  and  enjoyments 
which  fitted  the  house,  the  company,  and  the  feast.  Just 
as  we  got  to  the  fruit,  your  letters  arrived,  brought  by  a 
young  man  from  my  house.  *  *  *  I  read  them  to 
the  company  *  *  *  and  because  in  them  you  praised 
the  Latin  language  and  had  little  good  to  say  for  the 
Tuscan,  Aretino  grew  particularly  angry,  and  if  he  had 
not  been  stopped,  I  believe  he  would  have  turned  his  hand 
to  one  of  the  crudest  invectives  in  the  world,  for  he 
excitedly  demanded  pen  and  paper.  However,  he  did  not 
fail  to  give  us  a  good  share  of  it  in  words.  At  last  the 
supper  ended  hilariously."  1 

The  friendship  of  Titian  and  Aretino  was  the  most  nat- 
ural thing  in  the  world.  Their  tastes  and  view  of  life 
were  the  same,  and  each  was  anxious  to  make  out  of  his 
talents  fame  and  the  means  of  luxury.  Aretino  had  great 
skill  as  a  critic  of  art ;  and  the  chief  artists  of  the  day  were 
glad  to  have  his  advice,  feared  his  blame  and  sought  his 
praise.  When  he  wrote  to  Michael  Angelo,  saying  that 
he  was  tempted  to  come  to  Rome  just  to  see  the  "Last 

1  Quoted  Cavalcaselle  and  Crowe  Tiziano,  Vol.  I,  page  458,  from  De'priml 
principii  della  Lingua  Romana.  Venezia,  1540. 


76  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Judgment"  and  give  a  pen-picture  of  the  stupendous  ef- 
fects which  he  felt  sure  the  painter  had  produced,  the 
great  solitary,  so  little  given  to  compliments,  replied : 

"Magnificent  Messer  Pietro,  my  master  and  brother, 
your  letter  gave  me  both  pain  and  pleasure.  I  congratu- 
lated myself  because  it  came  from  you,  who  are  unique  in 
the  world  in  virtu,  and  at  the  same  time  I  was  very  sorry 
that,  having  completed  the  great  part  of  my  picture,  I 
could  not  use  your  imagination,  which  is  so  successful 
that  if  the  day  of  judgment  had  taken  place  and  you  had 
seen  it,  your  words  could  not  have  reproduced  it  better. 
I  shall  not  only  be  glad  to  have  you  answer  my  letter,  but 
I  beg  you  to  do  so,  because  kings  and  emperors  consider 
it  the  greatest  of  favors  to  be  named  by  your  pen.  Mean- 
time, if  I  have  anything  which  pleases  you,  I  offer  it  to 
you  with  my  heart. 

Always  yours, 

MlCHELAGNOLO  BUONARUOTI."  * 

It  had  long  been  the  part  of  every  finished  man  of  the 
world  to  have  some  taste  in  art  and  to  be  ready  to  express 
a  judgment  upon  a  statue  or  a  picture,  but  Aretino  has 
the  best  possible  claim  to  be  regarded  as  the  father  of  that 
genre  of  literature  which  is  known  as  art  criticism.  His 
skill  in  this  was  so  clearly  recognized  that  his  contempo- 
rary Lodovico  Dolce,  writing  a  Dialogue  on  Painting, 
makes  Aretino  the  chief  speaker.  Any  artist  seems  to 
have  been  glad  to  work  for  him.  Half  a  dozen  different 
medalists  modeled  his  head,  some  of  them  several  times. 
Six  of  the  leading  art  collections  of  the  world,  Munich, 

»I<«ttere  al  Aretino.  I.  part  2,  page  334. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  77 

Windsor,  the  Belvedere,  Berlin,  the  Pitti,  the  Hermitage, 
possess  his  portrait,1  so  frequently  reproduced  by  the  en- 
graver that  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale  has  thirty-eight 
different  prints  of  him.  These  favors  seem  to  have  cost 
Aretino  no  money.  He  was  able  fully  to  repay  them  by 
the  constant  advertisement  he  gave  to  his  friends.  He 
never  misses  a  chance  of  mentioning  and  praising  the 
work  of  artists  he  approves.  When  the  factories  of  Mu- 
rano  turn  out  a  new  style  of  glass  vases,  decorated  with 
the  arabesques  of  Giovanni  da  Udine,  he  sends  a  case  of 
them  to  the  Marquis  of  Mantua,  pointing  out  their  beauty 
and  mentioning  at  the  same  time  that  they  are  called 
Aretini.2  When  Jacopo  del  Giallo  sends  him  a  miniature, 
he  writes  a  letter  which  was  worth  a  good  many  pieces 
of  gold  to  the  artist : 

"I  am  not  blind  in  painting,  and  many  times  Raphael 
and  Fra  Sebastiano  and  Titian  have  taken  my  advice, 
*  *  *  and  I  know  that  miniaturists  take  their  designs 
from  the  masters  of  painted  glass  work;  they  do  noth- 
ing but  a  charming  combination  of  deep  blue,  of  azure 
green,  of  cochineal  lake,  and  of  powdered  gold ;  they  spend 
their  utmost  skill  on  a  shell  or  a  strawberry  and  similar 
little  novelties.  But  your  work  is  full  of  drawing  and 
relief.  *  *  *  Everybody  is  pleased  with  the  way  in 
which  the  little  children,  resting  their  feet  on  the  head  of 
the  eagle,  hold  up  the  letter  addressed  in  capitals  with  the 
name  of  the  Emperor.  *  *  *  But  how  shall  I  repay 
you  for  such  graceful  work,  since  you  do  not  want  money  ? 

*Art  critics  have  raised  the  question  whether  some  of  these  are  correctly 
named  in  the  catalogues. 
•Aretino,   Lettere,    I,   24. 


78  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

I  will  give  you  back  ink  for  your  colours  and  effort  for 
your  labour.  By  which  your  name  will  have  as  much 
pleasure  in  the  fame  I  shall  give  it  as  I  have  had  delight 
in  the  work  you  have  made  for  me."  1 

This  was  no  idle  boast  of  Aretino.  He  did  the  great- 
est service  to  the  artists  he  knew.  The  fame  of  the  other 
two  members  of  the  trio  of  friends,  Sansovino  and  Titian, 
has  outlived  his.  The  biographers  of  Titian  can  only 
wonder  why  he  had  anything  to  do  with  such  a  man. 
But  it  never  occurred  to  Titian  that  Aretino's  friendship 
was  anything  but  a  great  gain  and  a  matter  of  pride. 
Aretino  got  commissions  for  him  from  the  Emperor,  he 
wrote  sonnets  for  most  of  his  portraits.  When  Titian's 
imperial  pension  was  not  paid,  Aretino  used  every  effort 
to  get  it,  writing  to  his  friends  to  use  their  influence,  offer- 
ing to  Ottaviano  de'  Medici  four  portraits  of  members  of 
his  family  from  the  masters'  brush  if  he  would  make  the 
treasury  pay  the  arrears.  Vasari,  who  knew  both,  says 
that  the  friendship  of  Aretino  was  of  the  greatest  ad- 
vantage to  Titian,  both  "as  a  matter  of  honor  and  of 
material  gain,  because  he  made  him  known  far  and  wide 
where  his  pen  reached,  and  especially  to  princes  of  im- 
portance." 2 

He  was  equally  useful  to  Sansovino.  It  was  no  small 
service  to  an  architect  to  be  told,  in  a  letter  which  would 
be  read  by  many  of  the  patrons  of  art  throughout  Italy, 
that  "the  works  of  his  genius  had  put  the  finishing  touches 
on  the  pomp  of  the  city  of  Venice."  That  he  would  be 
very  foolish  to  leave  Venice  for  Rome  "in  spite  of  the  fact 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  103. 

*Vite  de'   Pittori,  part   III,   Vol.   II,  page  810. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  79 

that  popes  and  cardinals  continually  torment  you  to  do 
so."  At  the  same  time  he  adds  they  are  not  to  be  blamed 
for  this  because  "they  never  look  at  the  church  of  the 
Florentines,  which  you  founded  on  the  banks  of  the  Tiber 
to  the  wonder  of  Raphael,  Antonio  da  San  Gallo  and 
Baldassare  da  Siena,  they  never  turn  toward  San  Marcello, 
your  work,  nor  towards  the  tombs  of  Aragon,  Santa  Croce 
nor  Aginense  that  they  do  not  sigh  over  the  absence  of 
Sansovino."  *  And  Aretino  was  not  content  with  ad- 
vancing the  reputation  of  his  artist  friends.  He  did  every- 
thing in  his  power  to  foster  the  taste  for  art  among  those 
who  paid  for  it.  He  makes  the  characters  of  his  come- 
dies discuss  noted  pictures  and  buildings  and  the  glory  of 
those  who  built  them.  His  letters  speak  continually  of 
art,  and  in  one  he  touches  with  master  hand  the  strongest 
motive  of  most  of  its  patrons  in  the  Renascence : 

"The  prince,  who  reigns  solely  because  he  is  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  ought  to  imitate  the  maker  of  all  things, 
whose  power,  according  to  the  model  of  his  will,  built 
Paradise  for  the  angels  and  the  world  for  men,  placing 
on  the  fagade  of  the  great  edifice  of  heaven,  as  it  were,  his 
coat  of  arms  painted  by  the  brush  of  nature — a  sun  of 
gold  with  its  infinite  stars  and  a  moon  of  silver  in  a  broad 
field  of  bright  blue.  And  just  as  every  one  of  us  who  is 
born,  as  soon  as  he  opens  the  eyes  of  consciousness  is  as- 
tonished looking  now  at  the  heaven  and  now  at  the  earth, 
giving  thanks  to  Him  who  made  one  and  created  the  other, 
so  the  descendants  of  your  Excellency,  wondering  at  the 
magnitude  of  the  edifices  begun  and  finished  by  you,  will 
bless  the  generous  providence  of  their  magnanimous  pred- 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  191. 


8o  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ecessor  with  the  blessing  given  to  the  mind  of  the  an- 
cients embodied  in  stone  in  their  theaters  and  amphithe- 
aters by  one  who  sees  the  pride  of  the  ruins  of  Rome — 
whose  wonders  show  what  were  the  habitations  of  the  con- 
querors of  the  universe."  * 

Aretino  judged  in  the  taste  of  the  day  and  wrote  in 
its  style.  He  told  Vasari  in  regard  to  some  drapery, 
"Raphael  has  drawn  things  of  the  same  sort.  He  has  not 
surpassed  you  so  much  that  you  need  regret  it."  2  He 
wrote  to  Giulio  Romano  that  if  Apelles  and  Vitruvius 
could  see  the  buildings  and  paintings  he  was  doing  in 
Mantua,  "they  would  approve  the  judgment  of  the  world 
which  preferred  him  for  originality  and  charm  to  any  one 
who  had  ever  touched  compass  or  brush."  But  in  regard 
to  one  of  his  friends  Aretino's  enthusiasm  was  guided  by 
knowledge  and  skill.  Those  who  knew  Titian  best  are 
most  ready  to  admit  that  they  do  not  understand  the 
secrets  of  his  art  better  than  Aretino.  The  comments  he 
has  left  touch  the  finest  points  of  his  friend's  pictures.  The 
angel  of  the  annunciation  "filling  everything  with  light 
and  shining  in  the  air  with  fresh  radiance,  bending  gently 
with  a  reverence  which  makes  us  believe  he  is  really  in  the 
presence  of  Maria;"  the  portrait  of  the  little  girl  of 
Roberto  Strozzi,  so  true  that  if  "art  should  say  it  was  not 
real,  nature  would  swear  it  was  not  imitation ;"  the  lamb 
in  the  arms  of  the  little  St.  John,  "so  natural  that  a  ewe 
would  bleat  at  sight  of  it " — these  are  not  vague  praises. 
The  words  come  not  only  from  the  lips  but  the  eyes.  And 
it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  better  phrase  than  that  by  which 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  161. 
8  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  184. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  81 

he  places  Titian  in  a  sonnet  alongside  of  the  two  most  cele- 
brated artists  Italy  had  produced. 

"Divine  in  beauty  was  Raphael,  and  Michael  Angelo 
was  more  divine  than  human  in  his  stupendous  design — 
but  Titian  has  in  his  brush  the  sense  of  things."  1 

Pietro  has  perhaps  shown  most  plainly  how  well  he 
understood  his  friend  in  the  following  letter  to  him : 

"Having,  contrary  to  my  own  habit,  taken  my  meal 
alone,  Signer  Compare,  or  rather  in  company  with  this 
quartan  fever  which  does  not  let  me  taste  my  food,  I  got 
up  from  table,  having  dined  on  the  desperation  with  which 
I  sat  down  to  it.  Placing  my  arms  on  the  window  ledge 
and  resting  my  chest  and  almost  my  entire  body  against 
it,  I  gave  myself  up  to  gazing  at  the  wonderful  spectacle 
made  by  the  infinite  number  of  boats  which,  full  of  for- 
eigners as  well  as  natives,  enlivened  not  only  those  who 
looked  on  but  even  the  Grand  Canal  itself ;  joy  of  every- 
body who  furrows  its  waters  with  the  keel  of  his  boat. 
And  when  two  gondolas  with  celebrated  gondoliers  had 
finished  a  race,  I  found  great  enjoyment  in  the  people  who 
had  stopped  to  see  it  at  the  bridge  of  the  Rialto,  the  quay 
of  the  Camerlinghi,  the  Fish  market,  the  ferry  of  S.  Sofia, 
and  the  Casa  da  Mosto.  And  while  these  crowds  went 
their  different  ways  with  gay  applause,  I,  in  the  mood  of 
a  man  who  begins  to  bore  himself  because  he  does  not 
know  what  to  do  with  his  mind  and  his  thoughts,  turn  my 
eyes  to  the  sky,  which,  since  God  made  it,  was  never 
touched  with  beauty  by  such  lovely  painting  of  light  and 
shadows.  The  atmosphere  was  one  of  those  which  they 

'Aretino,  Lettere,  VI,  203. 


82  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

try  to  express  who  envy  you  because  they  cannot  be  you. 
Try  to  see  it  as  I  describe  it.  In  the  first  place,  the  houses, 
which  seemed  not  of  real  stone,  but  of  some  stuff  of 
dreams — and  then  bring  before  your  eyes  the  atmosphere, 
which  in  some  parts  appeared  pure  and  fresh,  in  others 
turbid  and  wan.  Think  also  of  the  marvelous  view  I  had 
of  the  clouds  of  condensed  dampness,  which  in  the  center 
of  the  picture  (princlpale  veduta)  stood  partly  near  to  the 
roofs  and  partly  in  the  middle  distance,  since  the  right 
hand  was  filled  with  a  smoky  vapor  tending  toward  a  dark 
ash  color.  I  was  truly  astonished  at  the  changing  tints 
the  clouds  showed.  The  nearest  blazed  with  the  flaming 
fires  of  the  sun.  The  more  distant  were  reddened  with 
the  glow  of  red  lead,  not  too  well  heated.  Oh,  with  what 
beautiful  touches  the  brushes  of  nature  thrust  back  the 
atmosphere  yonder,  clearing  it  away  from  the  palaces  in 
the  style  of  Titian  when  he  paints  landscapes.  In  certain 
parts  there  showed  a  greenish  blue,  in  others  a  blue- 
green  mixed  indeed  by  the  caprice  of  nature,  mistress  of 
the  masters.  She  darkened  and  threw  into  relief  with 
shadows  and  high  lights  what  she  wished  to  darken  or 
bring  out  until  I,  who  know  that  your  brush  is  the  very 
soul  of  her  ministering  spirits,  cried  out  three  or  four 
times,  "Oh,  Titian,  where  are  you  now !"  1 

Between  the  lines  of  this  letter  the  discerning  eye  may 
read  how  pleasant  must  have  been  the  many  hours  the  two 
spent  together  at  Aretino's  windows  on  the  Grand  Canal 
or  in  Titian's  little  loggia  looking  off  across  his  garden 
to  Murano  and  the  hills  of  Cadore. 

'Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  48. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  83 

On  the  otHer  hand,  Titian  does  not  fail  to  tell  of  the 
triumphs  his  friend  has  won  by  the  pen.  He  writes  from 
Rome  that  in  the  highest  society  of  the  court  one  hears 
nothing  but,  "This  is  what  Aretino  said."  He  writes 
from  Ratisbon  to  say  that  the  Duke  of  Alva  talks  of  the 
divine  Aretino  every  day  and  the  Emperor  showed  every 
sign  of  pleasure  when  he  was  told  that  all  Italy  believes 
that  the  Pope  is  going  to  make  Aretino  a  cardinal. 

For  during  his  life  at  Venice,  Aretino  vastly  increased 
the  literary  reputation  he  brought  there  and  made  himself 
an  acknowledged  power  in  the  world.  His  work  may  be 
summed  up  under  six  heads, — poetry,  tragedy,  comedy, 
letters,  pornographic  writings,  religious  writings. 

His  non-dramatic  poetry  may  for  the  purposes  of  this 
essay  be  dismissed  in  a  few  lines.  He  wrote  great  quanti- 
ties of  it,  but  except  where  verse  was  the  medium  for  his 
satiric  verve,  it  is  hard  to  understand  why  it  was  esteemed 
highly  in  a  day  when  everybody  composed  poetry.  Most 
of  it  was  never  printed  and  the  loss  to  the  world  is  not 
thought  to  be  great  by  any  of  his  commentators  except 
Bertani,  who  seems  to  consider  Aretino  in  all 
respects  one  of  the  great  lights  of  Italian  litera- 
ture. His  tragedy  of  Horace  was  the  most  care- 
fully composed  of  all  his  works,  and  the  only 
one  which  is  approved  by  those  who  wrote  of  him 
up  to  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years.  A  French  critic  con- 
siders it  superior  to  Corneille  and  an  Italian  historian  of 
literature  ranks  it  with  Shakespeare.  Such  judgments 
came  rather  from  the  ardor  of  discoverers  than  from  the 
sobriety  of  critics.  But  the  most  esteemed  of  all  general 
historians  of  Italian  literature,  Professor  Gaspary,  con- 


84  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

siders  it  "absolutely  the  most  important  tragedy  of  the 
sixteenth  century."  1  One  merit  it  certainly  had,  the 
merit  of  a  new  method  of  treatment.  The  few  tragedies 
in  the  vernacular  which  preceded  it  were  imitations  of  the 
Greek  writers.  Aretino  did  not,  like  Shakespeare,  cast 
off  entirely  the  fetters  of  the  classic  unities,  but  he 
tried  to  write  like  an  Italian  of  the  sixteenth  century  and 
not  like  a  Greek  of  the  fifth  or  a  Latin  of  the  first.  And 
therefore  he  is  certainly  not  unworthy  of  honour  among 
the  predecessors  of  the  great  modern,  who,  ceasing  to  im- 
itate the  ancient  giants,  won  a  place  among  them. 

Even  more  original  are  his  comedies.  The  three  or 
four  comedies  worthy  of  mention  which  were  in  exist- 
ence when  he  wrote  the  first  of  his  were,  to  a  great  extent, 
imitations  of  Plautus  and  Terence,  introducing  the  stock 
characters  of  the  Roman  stage.  Aretino,  who  could  not 
read  Latin,  was  more  inclined  to  draw  from  life  as  he 
saw  it.  He  knew  life  on  the  shady  side  and  the  comic 
force  of  his  scenes  is  coarse.  But  he  made  the  characters 
who  tread  his  stage  out  of  his  own  recollections  of  men 
he  had  known.  And  to  read  his  scenes  is  to  know  them 
too.  The  street  urchin  of  Mantua  tying  fireworks  to  the 
school  teacher's  coat  tail;  Messer  Maco,  of  Siena,  come 
up  to  Rome  to  fulfil  the  wish  of  his  father  that  he  should 
become  a  cardinal,  and  the  hawks  into  whose  claws  he  flut- 
ters; the  hypocrite,  a  parasite  cloaking  his  greed  with 
piety  instead  of  flattery — these  and  a  score  of  others  are 
real  people.  They  move  against  a  background  vile  with 

1  Adolf  Gaspary.     Storia  della  Letteratura  Italiana  tradotto  del  tedesco  da 
Vittorio  Rossi.     Torino,  1900.     Vol.  II,  part  2,  page  221. 
'Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  48. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  85 

the  vileness  Aretino  had  learned  at  the  courts  and  in  the 
streets  of  the  cities  where  he  had  lived.  But  obscenity 
was  then  considered  a  necessary  element  of  comedy,  and 
the  atmosphere  which  surrounds  the  characters  of  Are- 
tino's  comedies  is  less  turpid  than  that  of  the  Suppositi 
by  Aristo,  acted  in  the  castle  of  San  Angelo  with  scenery 
by  Raphael  and  to  the  delight  of  Leo  X.1 

The  distinctively  pornographic  works  of  Aretino,  aside 
from  the  sonnets  already  alluded  to,  consist  of  the  two 
first  parts  of  a  book  entitled  Ragionamenti.  Competent 
judges  who  have  read  them  hazard  the  opinion  that  they 
earn  for  Aretino  the  primacy  of  that  long  succession  of 
writers  through  all  the  ages  of  the  history  of  literature 
who  have  sold  their  pens  to  the  service  of  the  goddess  of 
lubricity.  There  are  times  when  the  imagination  of  a 
generation  seems  to  be  poisoned  by  a  mephitic  miasma  and 
impelled  to  dwell  with  insane  persistence  on  the  shames 
of  life.  The  result  of  such  a  diseased  bias  in  our  own  lit- 
erature may  be  seen  in  the  dialogue  of  the  dramatists  of 
the  Restoration,  and  page  after  page  written  in  Italy  dur- 
ing the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  reeks  with  the 
same  stuff. 

It  is  true  indeed  that  coarseness  of  language  is  not  the 
measure  of  corruption.  Habits  of  speech  change  in  the 
course  of  centuries.  Shakespeare  puts  jests  in  the  mouths 
of  gentlemen  and  ladies  which  seem  strangely  out  of  place 
in  the  modern  theatre.  In  the  Latin  reading  book  Eras- 
mus wrote  for  boys,  there  are  jokes  of  the  kind  that  circu- 

1  Letter  to  the  Duke  of  Ferrara  from  Rome,  March,  1519. 
1  Lettere  d'  Ariosto  A.  Cappelli,  Milano,  1887.     Documenti,  page  CLXXVII. 
1  The    Calandra    of    Bibbiena,    a   piece   admitted   by   all    commentators   to   be 
obscene,  was  also  given  before  Leo  X. 


86  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

late  in  low  drinking  places.  Queen  Anne  of  France  asked 
an  ex-ambassador  to  teach  her  a  few  phrases  of  Spanish 
to  greet  the  Spanish  ambassador.  He  taught  her  some  in- 
decent expressions,  which  she  conscientiously  repeated  un- 
til she  had  learned  them  by  heart.  When  he  told  the  King 
what  he  had  done  Louis  XII,  it  is  true,  warned  the  Queen, 
but  roared  with  laughter  over  what  he  thought  an  excel- 
lent piece  of  wit.1 

Soiled  waters  do  not  come  from  a  pure  spring  and  that 
with  which  the  heart  is  full  runs  over  on  the  lips,  but  still 
it  will  not  do  to  confound  manners  with  morals,  nor  forget 
certain  modern  writers  who  have  pandered  to  depraved 
instincts  with  a  perfumed  diction  and  the  subtlest  refine- 
ments of  style. 

We  should  keep  in  mind  also  the  satiric  intent  of  much 
of  the  writing  of  Aretino's  day.  It  was  frequently  assert- 
ed that  the  best  way  to  save  people  from  vice  was  to  show 
it  to  them.  Both  these  extenuations,  of  social  custom  and 
the  prevalent  methods  of  satire  may  be  plead  for  Aretino. 
One  of  the  coarsest  of  his  letters  (most  of  which  are  not 
at  all  coarse)  was  written  to  a  noble  lady  and  printed  in  the 
collection  to  do  her  honour.  And  Aretino  claimed  that  his 
dialogues  were  a  warning  to  virtue  and  an  exposure  of 
vice.  It  is  not  possible,  however,  that  he  could  have  been 
unaware  that  such  an  exposure  is  never  a  warning.  He 
ranked  his  dialogues  in  honour  among  his  other  works  and 
in  telling  a  dream  where  the  gods  on  Parnassus  presented 
him  with  a  basket  of  wreaths,  alongside  "one  of  thorns 
for  his  Christian  writings"  and  "one  of  laurel  for  h'is 

1  De  Maulde  la  Claviere,  "L,a.  Diplomatic  au  temps  de  Machiavel."  Paris, 
Lcroux,  1892,  page  368. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  87 

verses  on  love  and  war,"  was  one  "of  rue  for  his  las- 
civious writings."1  All  of  his  modern  critics  agree  that 
they  are  a  shame  to  literature. 

The  assertion  is  made  nowadays  that  such  an  absolute 
moral  judgment  has  no  place  in  history — that  to  see  life 
truly  in  the  perspective  of  the  ages  we  must  forget  our 
own  measures  of  right  and  wrong.  But  knowledge  does 
not  require  us  to  limit  conscience  to  the  domain  of  con- 
duct. Conscience  has  rights  also  in  the  realm  of  reason. 
The  surrender  of  fixed  principle  is  not  the  necessary  prep- 
aration for  sympathetic  observation  of  men  living  or  dead. 
History  puts  her  students  in  no  such  perilous  position  be- 
tween the  risk  of  surrendering  their  moral  heritage  to 
obsolete  barbarisms  or  of  enslaving  their  moral  judgment 
to  decadent  opinion.  There  is  a  righteousness  against 
which  we  have  the  right  to  measure  the  past  as  well  as 
the  present.  But  every  man  lives  not  only  under  the  eter- 
nal heavens  but  also  in  the  changing  horizon.  To  see 
Aretino  as  his  admirers  saw  him,  we  must  see  him  in  his 
horizon,  and  in  that  horizon  public  opinion  did  not  force 
license  to  wear  the  cloak  of  secrecy  nor  compel  vice  to  find 
a  decorous  appearance  convenient.  There  are  tales  of 
Boccaccio  which  seem  as  bad  as  possible  until  one  opens 
the  novels  of  some  of  Aretino's  contemporaries.  Two 
clergymen  he  knew,  popular  romancers,  put  on  many  of 
their  pages  scenes  which  could  now  be  recited  only  in  the 
secret  sittings  of  the  police  court.  One  of  them  received 
praise  and  reward  for  reciting  some  of  his  stories  before 
Pope  Clement  VII.  The  other  in  his  later  years  was  the 
temporary  incumbent  of  a  bishopric  in  France. 

'Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  135. 


88  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

The  age  bore  with  pleasure  the  empire  of  corrupt  imag- 
ination ;  Aretino  defended  the  rights  of  that  rule  which  he 
did  more  than  any  other  to  confirm;  to  make  him  the 
scapegoat  of  the  vileness  of  his  people  is  not  to  do  any  par- 
ticular injustice  to  him  but  it  is  to  fail  to  see  mirrored  in 
his  life  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  The  pornographic  writ- 
ings of  Aretino  did  not  make  him  infamous  in  his  own 
day — they  did  not  even  make  him  famous.  They  were 
published  before  his  death  less  often  than  his  other  prose 
works,  and  contemporary  imprints  of  them  are  so  rare  that, 
in  1693,  Bayle  had  some  trouble  in  finding  out  whether 
they  had  been  printed  during  the  life  of  their  author.  It 
was  subsequent  generations  who  found  in  them  his  chief 
claim  to  be  read,  and  attributed  to  him  a  number  of  simi- 
lar works  by  other  writers.  Among  all  his  works  they 
have  had  the  most  continuous  life  in  print.  They  have 
been  translated  into  four  languages  and  recently,  re-trans- 
lated into  French  and  English,  they  have  been  issued  in 
sumptuous  editions.  The  type  which  gives  vogue  to  such 
dialogues  in  the  nineteenth  century  is  more  immoral  than 
the  pen  which  wrote  them  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Con- 
science has  its  rights  in  the  realm  of  judgment  but  his- 
tory cannot  be  read  in  the  spirit  of  the  Pharisee,  and  zeal 
in  blackening  by  denunciation  the  dark  spots  in  the  lives 
of  the  dead  is  apt  to  lighten  too  much  by  contrast  the  vile 
shadows  that  lurk  around  the  most  brilliant  centres  of  our 
modern  civilization. 

Judged  by  the  statistics  of  the  press,  the  most  popular 
of  Aretino's  writings  were  his  religious  books.  Eight  edi- 
tions of  his  Penitential  Psalms  appeared  during  his  life- 
time, eight  of  his  Life  of  Christ,  five  of  his  Genesis  and 


PIETRO  ARETINO  89 

Vision  of  Noah,  five  of  his  Life  of  Saint  Catherine,  three 
of  his  Life  of  Saint  Thomas  Aquinas,  two  of  his  Life  of 
the  Virgin.  Their  character  can  best  be  judged  by  a  spe- 
cimen extract.  He  dilutes  the  first  verse  of  the  fifty-first 
psalm, — "Have  mercy  upon  me,  O  God,  according  to  Thy 
loving  kindness;  according  unto  the  multitude  of  Thy 
tender  mercies  blot  out  my  transgressions,"  into  the  fol- 
lowing,— "Have  mercy  on  me,  O  God,  not  according  to 
the  small  merit  of  my  fasting,  my  prayers,  my  wearing 
of  hair  shirts,  my  weeping,  but  according  to  Thy  great 
mercy  with  which  Thou  dost  surpass  in  greatness  the 
vault  of  heaven,  the  breast  of  the  mountains,  the  bosom 
of  the  sea,  the  lap  of  the  earth,  the  bottom  of  the  abyss  and 
the  measure  of  immensity,  and  beside  which  any  fault 
whatever  is  less  than  a  tiny  point  marked  in  the  center  of 
the  largest  circle.  Although  the  poison  which  iniquity 
generates  in  sin  sometimes  makes  it  swell  up  so  that,  mov- 
ing Thee  to  anger,  it  turns  to  rise  on  wings  until  it  seems 
to  desire  to  equal  the  very  summit  of  the  height  of  that 
pity  of  Thine  before  which,  because  I  am  certain  that 
it  conquers  in  Thyself  the  severity  of  Thy  justice,  I  have 
not  despaired  of  my  faults,"  etc.,  etc. 

The  Humanity  of  Christ  is  a  life  of  Christ  written  to 
suit  the  taste  of  the  age.  The  fact  that  it  was  translated 
into  French  and  the  quick  succession  of  reprints  show  that 
Pietro  succeeded  in  what  he  tried  to  do.  He  was  not  able 
to  base  his  work,  as  the  authors  of  the  large  number  of 
lives  of  Christ  which  have  been  written  in  our  own  day 
all  profess  to  have  done, — upon  a  careful  criticism  of  the 
value  of  the  records  of  that  life.  Nor  if  he  had  been  able 
would  he  have  thought  of  doing  it.  For  to  begin  any  his- 


90  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

torical  criticism  of  the  documents  of  the  life  of  Christ 
would  have  raised  a  charge  of  heresy  so  radical  and  pro- 
found that  no  writer,  orthodox  or  schismatic,  would  have 
had  the  moral  courage  to  face  it.  Out  of  the  mass  of  all 
those  stories  about  Jesus  Christ  which  anyone  had  ever 
believed  to  be  true,  whether  they  were  found  in  the  canon 
or  apocryphal  writings,  he  takes  what  suits  him,  arranges 
his  material  in  a  series  of  interesting  pictures  and  orna- 
ments them  with  imaginary  details  to  make  them  appear 
real.  He  carries  this  so  far  that  he  does  not  scruple  to 
put  into  the  mouth  of  Christ  long  harangues  which,  like 
the  speeches  of  the  heroes  of  the  classic  histories,  are  en- 
tirely invented.  By  these  means  he  made  a  life  of  Christ 
very  popular,  and  about  as  much  like  the  gospels  as  the 
sacred  pictures  of  the  painters  of  his  own  day, — such  a 
work  as  the  editor  of  a  magazine  is  said  to  have  recently 
demanded  of  a  well-known  writer,  a  "Life  of  Christ  up  to 
date  and  snappy." 

He  sketches  into  the  picture  with  rapid  strokes  the 
popular  stories  of  the  apocryphal  gospel  of  the  infancy, 
like  the  birds  of  clay  made  to  fly  by  the  Infant  Jesus.  He 
tells  in  detail  the  story  of  Christ's  descent  into  the  under 
world.  He  expands  the  incidents  which  seem  apt  to  ex- 
cite the  interest  of  his  readers.  He  gives  a  description  of 
the  feast  of  the  marriage  at  Cana  and  reports  a  long  dis- 
course of  Christ  to  the  young  couple  on  the  dangers  of  the 
married  state.  He  is  particularly  pleased  with  the  inci- 
dent of  Mary  Magdalen,  describes  a  splendid  banquet 
served  in  her  house  and  gives  two  pages  to  a  full  descrip- 
tion of  the  toilet  she  makes  when  persuaded  by  her  good 
sister  to  go  and  see  Christ.  The  Master  receives  her  with 


PIETRO  ARETINO  91 

a  speech  precisely  like  a  paragraph  from  the  sermon  of 
one  of  the  popular  preachers  of  the  day ;  several  of  whom 
Aretino  admired  very  much.  Some  of  the  sayings  of  our 
Lord  recorded  in  the  gospels,  Aretino  reproduced  clearly 
and  with  vigour.  Indeed,  the  vivid  and  nervous  style  he 
occasionally  uses  in  his  letters  and  comedies,  was  well  fit- 
ted to  translate  the  gospels.  Aretino  had  found  it  where 
Luther  found  the  words  for  his  translation  of  the  gospels, 
in  the  mouths  of  the  common  people  who  "heard  Christ 
gladly."  But  Aretino  tries  to  emphasize  Christ's  words  by 
diluting  them  into  his  other  style — the  style  of  his  compli- 
mentary letters  to  the  scholars  of  the  time  like  Bembo  and 
Molza,  or  to  the  kings  and  captains  who  paid  him.  Here, 
for  instance,  is  the  way  he  begins  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount, — "Blessed  are  they  whose  spirit,  poor  in  power  of 
argument,  is  content  in  Thy  belief,  considers  what  it  sees, 
what  it  hopes  and  what  it  possesses  as  the  gift  of  God  and 
does  not  make  confusion  for  itself  in  doubt  suggested  by 
the  temerity  of  the  sciences.  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
is  of  him  who  nourishes  the  intellect  with  the  simplicity  of 
faith.  Blessed  are  they  in  whose  bosom  beats  the  heart 
of  a  lamb  and  not  of  a  lion,  because  meekness  is  the  manna 
of  the  soul,  and  pride  is  the  poison  which  puffs  up  the 
body.  The  meek  have  power  to  make  the  earth  fertile  with 
blessings.  Therefore  their  humility  surpasses  the  heights 
of  the  mountains."  l  Here  is  the  way  he  makes  Christ  be- 
gin the  model  prayer, — "Our  father  who  art  in  heaven, 
our  country  for  we  travel  like  pilgrims  in  these  bodies  until 
the  hour  Thou  dost  appoint  for  us  takes  us  from  this  vale 
of  tears,  and,  recalling  us  from  earthly  exile,  replaces  us 

1  Edition  of  1545,  page  62. 


92  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

in  the  bosom  of  paradise ;  hallowed  be  Thy  name  in  every- 
thing that  comes  to  pass.  Because  whether  we  are  called 
by  Thee  through  grace,  or  punished  by  Thee  through  jus- 
tice, both  results  are  to  Thy  glory,"  etc.1 

Instead  of  illustrations  the  book  is  provided  with  little 
reproductions  in  words  of  such  pictures  as  the  artist 
friends  of  the  author  were  painting  from  the  Life  of 
Christ ;  the  Nativity,  with  the  background  of  "the  ruin  of 
an  ancient  edifice  with  broken  columns  and  many  pieces 
of  living  stone  which  storms  and  ivy  taking  their  own  way 
had  made  their  own ;"  or  the  Descent  from  the  Cross,  with 
the  fall  of  the  limbs  of  the  dead  body  and  the  muscular 
action  of  those  lowering  it  minutely  described  from  can- 
vases Aretino  remembered ;  or  the  Angel  descending  from 
Heaven  to  comfort  Christ  in  the  Garden,  "his  wings 
coloured  like  the  rainbow  letting  him  sink  to  earth  gently 
as  a  pigeon  into  its  nest."  In  all  these  features  the  book 
appealed  to  the  taste  of  the  day,  and  although  of  far  less 
literary  value  than  his  comedies,  his  pious  writings  were 
equally  admired.  Religious  literature  suited  to  popular 
tastes  was  as  yet  little  known  in  Italy,  and  in  it  the  famous 
satirist  scored  a  great  success.  Nor  is  there  anything  in 
this  Life  of  Christ,  judged  by  lasting  standards,  more  for- 
eign to  the  spirit  of  the  gospels  or  more  shocking  to  taste, 
than  that  paragraph  of  one  of  the  most  celebrated  lives  of 
Christ  of  our  own  day,  which  makes  "the  vision  of  a  love- 
sick woman  give  to  a  world  a  risen  God."  Everything  in- 
dicates that  Aretino  had  no  sense  of  incongruity  in  pub- 
lishing during  the  same  year  the  Life  of  Christ  and  the 
Ragionamenti.  He  prints  the  dedicatory  letters  to  his 

1  Edition  of  1545,  page  64. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  93 

Ragionamenti,  his  Sonnets  on  Marc  Antonio's  engravings 
and  his  Life  of  Christ  side  by  side  in  the  first  volume  of 
his  letters.1  Nor  did  any  of  the  thirty  odd  Cardinals  to 
whom  he  wrote  or  from  whom  he  received  letters,  suggest 
that  the  collocation  was  infelicitous. 

In  the  publication  of  his  letters  Aretino  showed  again 
his  originality.  He  was  the  first  Italian  to  print  his  own 
letters  in  the  vulgar  tongue  and  a  crowd  of  imitators 
proved  the  success  of  the  experiment.  Five  years  after 
their  appearance  he  spoke  of  plenty  of  volumes  of 
"learned  elegances  of  all  the  best  wits  of  the  century,"  be- 
ing in  print.  But  he  comforted  himself  for  the  poor  show- 
ing his  might  make  among  these  learned  imitators,  by  the 
reflection  that,  though  "the  types  of  Aldus  are  like  pearls, 
one  would  much  sooner  have  made  the  first  rude  charac- 
ters which  began  the  art  of  printing."  2 

The  men  of  the  sixteenth  century  seem  to  have  been 
ceaselessly  engaged  in  correspondence.  More  than  three 
thousand  of  Aretino's  letters  have  survived.  And  there 
is  every  reason  to  believe  him  when  he  says  that  a  number 
at  least  as  great  has  perished.  The  conscientious  reader 
is  often  tempted  to  wish  that  time  had  been  a  little  more 
severe.  For  the  scattered  pages  in  which,  with  quick  and 
sure  strokes,  he  draws  pictures  full  of  life,  are  surrounded 
by  interminable  successions  of  pompous  and  compliment- 
ary phrases,  laboriously  repeating  the  same  idea.  As  the 
reader  can  see  by  the  extracts  already  given,  Aretino  could 
write  straightforwardly  and  naturally.  But,  to  please  his 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  258,  259,  etc. 
•  Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  19. 


94 

public,  he  uses  for  most  of  his  letters  the  sort  of  writing 
he  employed  in  his  religious  works.  The  decadence  of 
taste  which  was  to  show  itself  in  the  love  of  baroque  art 
was  beginning  to  appear  in  a  liking  for  the  bombastic  in 
literature,  and  Aretino  fed  this  nascent  liking  to  the  full  in 
foretastes  of  the  sort  of  rhetoric  Shakespeare  parodied  in 
Love's  Labour's  Lost.  In  sentences  fairly  smothered  in  the 
exuberance  of  their  own  rhetoric  he  reiterates  his  thanks 
for  gifts  or  letters,  his  excuses  for  not  having  written  be- 
fore, his  sense  of  unworthiness  of  such  favours,  and  rises 
above  the  pitch  of  Japanese  politeness  in  compliment  and 
self  abasement.  According  to  his  own  account  he  burst 
into  tears  of  joy  on  receiving  many  letters.  He  cannot 
force  himself  to  the  impertinence  of  writing  to  one  who 
has  deigned  to  notice  him.  For  example,  he  tells  the 
Cardinal  Pisani, — "If  the  vileness  of  my  condition  could 
approach  as  close  to  the  nobility  of  yours  as  the  nobility 
of  yours  is  superior  to  the  vileness  of  mine,  I  would  say 
that  the  astonishment  I  have  felt  in  finding  myself  obliged 
to  write  to  you,  would  be  equal  to  that  you  will  feel  at 
sight  of  the  letter  I  address  to  you."  1  He  tells  Messer 
Ugolino  Martelli  that  he  loves  him  because  he  has  "the 
tree  of  genius  entirely  covered  with  the  flowers  which  pro- 
duce the  fruits  that  the  sun  of  glory  ripens."  2 

It  is  difficult  to  see  why  there  was  any  demand  for 
hundreds  of  pages  of  this  sort  of  collocation  of  words,  and 
future  generations  may  wonder  at  the  vogue  of  writers 
who  appear  to  us  perfect.  One  thing  is  certain,  Aretino 
wrote  in  this  way  not  because  of  the  infection  of  literary 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  240. 
•Aretino,   Lcttere,  I,  152. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  95 

fashion,  but  from  choice.  We  can  tell  this  because  his 
style  is  direct,  whenever  he  sets  it  free,  and  because  of  the 
flashes  of  shrewd  common  sense  which  break  into  the  long 
drawn  passages  of  rhetoric.  If  at  one  time  he  spends  a 
page  of  strained  eloquence  praising  the  virtues  of  clemency 
and  its  usefulness  in  government,  he  is  able  to  condense 
it  all  into  a  phrase  when  he  writes — "the  city  of  Perugia 
is  like  a  hard-mouthed  horse  which,  ridden  with  an  easy 
hand,  seems  to  be  quite  gentle."  1 

He  is  full  of  contempt  for  the  two  most  powerful  liter- 
ary affectations  of  his  day,  the  idea  of  the  Pedants  that 
the  perfect  writers  of  classic  antiquity  had  left  nothing  for 
succeeding  ages  except  comment  or  imitation,  and  the 
similar  idea  of  the  Petrarchists  that  all  possibilities  of  Ital- 
ian style  and  diction  were  contained  in  the  poetry  of  Pe- 
trarch and  the  prose  of  Boccaccio.  He  frankly  confesses 
more  than  once  that  he  cannot  read  Latin, — "I  hardly 
understand  the  language  with  which  I  was  born  and  I 
talk  in  it  and  write  in  it,  and  so  Plato  and  Aristotle, 
Demosthenes  and  Cicero,  Homer  and  Virgil  talked  and 
wrote  in  their  native  idioms."  2  "  If  the  soul  of  Petrarch 
and  Boccaccio,"  he  burst  out  in  disgust,  "are  tormented 
in  the  other  world  as  their  works  are  in  this,  they  ought  to 
deny  their  baptism."  3  For  we  find  two  kinds  of  writing 
among  Aretino's  letters ;  one  which  frankly  expresses  what 
he  thought  and  felt  at  the  moment,  the  other  related  to 
the  chief  purpose  for  which  he  wrote  half  his  letters  and 
printed  them  all.  That  purpose  was  to  coin  his  fame  into 
gold. 

»Aretino(  Lettere,  I,  49. 
'  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  242. 
•Aretino,  Lettcre,  I,  21. 


96  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Aretino  was  a  born  spendthrift.  Money  burned  in  his 
pockets  and  leaked  through  his  fingers.  And  like  so  many 
men  with  the  gift  of  language,  he  claimed  the  right  of  ge- 
nius to  have  every  desire  satisfied.  In  1537  he  was  spend- 
ing, according  to  his  own  account,  about  a  hundred  du- 
cats a  month,  and  in  1542  he  reckoned  his  receipts  at 
eighteen  hundred  ducats  a  year.1  A  small  part,  if  any,  of 
Aretino's  income  came  from  the  sale  of  his  books.  He 
nowhere  alludes  to  such  gain,  and  when  he  issued  his  first 
volume  of  letters,  printed  in  it  the  following  letter  to  his 
publisher,  Marcolini : — "With  the  same  good  will  with 
which  I  have  given  you  the  other  works,  I  give  you  these 
few  letters  which  have  been  gathered  by  the  love  which 
my  young  men  bear  to  what  I  have  written.  The  only 
profit  I  wish  is  your  testimony  that  I  have  given  them  to 
you.  *  *  *  For  a  man  to  print  at  his  own  cost  and 
to  sell  the  books  he  produces  by  his  imagination  seems  to 
me  like  feeding  on  himself.  *  *  *  God  willing,  I 
wish  to  get  my  pay  for  the  fatigues  of  writing  from  the 
courtesy  of  princes  and  not  from  the  poverty  of  those 
why  buy  my  books,  preferring  to  bear  poverty  rather  than 
lower  my  genius  by  bringing  the  liberal  arts  down  to  the 
level  of  the  mechanic  arts.  And  it  is  clear  that  those 
authors  who  sell  what  they  write  become  servants  of  their 
own  infamy.  Let  him  learn  to  be  a  merchant  who  seeks 
material  gain  and  practising  the  trade  of  a  book-seller, 
lay  aside  the  name  of  a  poet.  *  *  *  So  print  my 
letters  carefully  and  well,  because  I  do  not  want  any  other 
return  from  them.  On  the  same  terms,  from  time  to  time, 

1  The  income  of  the  contemporary  Venetian  nobles  ranged  from  seven  hun- 
dred to  four  thousand  ducats  of  gold. — Molmenti. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  97 

you  will  be  the  heir  of  what  comes  from  my  brain."1  This 
letter  was  omitted  in  later  editions,  and  one  may  suspect 
that  Aretino  changed  his  views  of  "the  mechanic  baseness" 
of  selling  his  works  and  sometimes  eked  out  his  income 
from  the  book-shop. 

For  that  income  he  depended  on  the  "cortesia"  of 
Princes  returned  by  him  in  "servitu."  "Cortesia"  is  a 
magnanimous  readiness  to  promote  in  every  way  the  pleas- 
ure of  a  man  of  ability.  It  belongs  to  the  character  of  a 
prince.  Without  it  the  monarch  is  lower  than  the  mer- 
chant who  has  it.  "It  is  a  noble  thing,"  he  writes,  "to  love 
a  woman;  it  is  a  divine  thing  to  wish  well  to  a  man  of 
genius,  because  the  love  of  genius  is  related  to  the  love  of 
God."  And  his  pages  are  full  of  praises  of  this  divine 
trait  of  liberality  to  genius  and  invective  against  mean- 
ness. By  "servitu,"  which  repaid  cortesia,  he  meant  the 
moral  duty  of  the  man  of  genius  to  repay  his  patrons  by 
immortality.  He  asserts  that  "the  road  of  Cortesia  leads 
to  eternal  glory."  2  He  writes  to  the  Grand  Duke  of 
Florence:  the  volumes  produced  under  the  patronage 
of  Princes  are  "to  the  aspect  of  their  serene  names  like 
torches  gleaming  in  that  perpetual  splendour  which  ren- 
ders testimony  to  the  merits  which  fortune  cannot  leave 
behind  nor  time  bury  in  oblivion."  3  For  he  believed  that 
his  writings  would  give  eternal  glory  to  those  mentioned 
in  them  and  he  called  himself  "the  secretary  of  the 
world."  4  The  belief  was  not  too  fatuous  in  one  who  was 
told  in  various  forms  by  dozens  of  correspondents  "your 

1  Giornale  Storico,  Vol.  29,  page  239.     Pietro  Aretino  e  U  Franco. 

•Aretino,  I«ettere,  I,  54. 

•  Aretino,  Lettere,  Dedication  to,  Vol.  III. 

4  Aretino,  Lettere,   I,  206. 


98  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

benefits  are  of  such  a  nature  that  they  render  immortal 
those  who  receive  them."  x  And  the  world  of  great  men 
treated  him  like  its  secretary,  with  splendid  garments, 
heavy  gold  chains,  splendid  plate  and  streams  of  ducats. 
The  man  who  was  pensioned  and  complimented  simulta- 
neously by  Henry  VIII  of  England,  Francis  I  of  France, 
and  the  Emperor  Charles  V,  might  not  unreasonably  claim 
to  hold  a  position  of  international  authority  in  the  world 
of  letters. 

For  all  the  favours  he  received  from  his  patrons  Aretino 
paid  to  the  best  of  his  ability.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how 
adulation  could  be  raised  to  a  pitch  higher  than  the  tone 
of  some  of  his  letters.  He  writes  to  Antonio  da  Leyva, — 
"It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  Antonio  is  more  God  than 
man,  because,  if  he  was  more  man  than  God,  he  would 
not  have  risen  from  a  private  position  to  be  a  prince  and 
from  a  mortal  to  an  immortal.  Everybody  knows  how 
much  dignity  Alexander  gained  from  being  born  of  a  king 
and  how  much  was  added  to  .Caesar  because  he  was  not 
descended  from  an  emperor.  For  which  reason  virtue 
and  not  fortune  crowned  him  in  the  same  way  in  which 
she  will  crown  you.  And  very  justly,  because  you  have 
gained  of  yourself  all  that  is  in  you.  Therefore  the  for- 
tunate emperor  ought  to  count  the  chief  of  his  felicities 
the  possession  of  his  good  Leyva."  2 

It  was  rather  difficult,  of  course,  to  keep  on  this  scale 
in  a  letter  to  da  Leyva's  master,  printed  almost  next  to  it. 
Aretino  was  equal  to  the  task.  He  tells  the  Emperor  that 
"if  the  scroll  on  which  he  writes  had  a  soul,  it  ought  to 

1  Lettcre  al  Aretino,  II,  part  2,  page  113. 
•Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  4«. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  99 

prefer  itself  to  all  the  glorious  scrolls  of  the  ancients  just 
because  it  is  not  read  but  merely  touched  by  the  friend 
of  Christ,  Charles  Augustus,  before  whose  merits  the  uni- 
verse ought  at  once  to  bow.  And  certainly  as  God  has 
enlarged  the  world  to  give  room  to  your  merits,  it  is  neces- 
sary for  Him  also  to  raise  the  sky  because  the  space  of  the 
entire  air  is  not  large  enough  for  the  flight  of  your  fame."  1 
And  to  be  sure  that  the  flattery  has  the  needed  personal 
touch  he  adds  in  another  letter, — "Truly,  O  Augustus, 
the  miracle  of  miracles  which  makes  you  miraculous  is 
you  yourself."  2 

He  has  variants  on  this  same  theme ;  as  when  he  writes 
to  the  Duke  of  Urbino  that — "he  prays  God  to  keep  him  in 
the  world  two  or  three  centuries  because  for  the  need  it 
has  of  your  virtu  any  other  term  of  life  will  be  short."  3 

He  is  able  to  touch  the  harp  of  flattery  with  a  firm 
hand  for  private  patrons  also.  He  writes  to  Signor  Sev- 
erino  Boner,  who  has  shown  towards  him  the  royal  virtue 
of  magnificence  in  every  sort  of  "cortesia,"  that — "He  is 
worthy  of  being  deified  in  the  eternity  of  memory  as  a  ter- 
restrial Jove."  * 

He  tells  Signora  Ginevra  Malatesta,  that  "everybody 
celebrates  her,  everybody  admires  her,  everybody  watches 
her,  and  in  so  doing  they  watch,  admire,  and  celebrate 
the  visible  divinity  of  this  entire  age."  5  And  he  bids 
Signora  Beatrice  Pia, — "exulting  in  the  thought  of  the 
graces  with  which  the  grave  qualities  which  make  you 


1  Aretino 
1  Aretino 
8  Aretino 

*  Aretino 

•  Aretino 


Lettere 
Lettere 
Lettere 
Lettere 
Lettere 


I,  49. 
Ill,  53. 

II,  55. 
II,  195. 
II,  17. 


ioo  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

illustrious  shine  in  splendour,  feel  certain  that  you  abound 
in  such  great  perfection  of  your  essential  nature  that  you 
could,  with  the  mere  superfluity  of  such  a  divine  gift, 
change  into  goodness  the  imperfections  of  the  being  of 
all  your  sex."  l 

He  is  not  appalled  even  by  the  difficulties  of  writing  to 
Barbarossa,  the  pirate  ruler  of  Algiers,  who  had  wasted 
Italy  with  fire  and  sword.  He  tells  him  "the  sun  envies 
you  because  the  glory  of  the  fame  which  crowns  you  with 
eternal  praise  goes  into  those  parts  of  the  world  where  the 
light  of  the  flame  which  he  offers,  cannot  go."  "So  that 
your  name  is  known  to  more  nations,  to  more  people,  to 
more  races  than  his.  And  hence  it  comes  that  all  tongues 
learn  it,  reverence  it  and  spread  it."  * 

But  perhaps  the  masterpiece  of  the  vast  collection  of 
flattery,  of  which  the  reader  has  only  a  few  scattered 
specimens,  is  found  in  Aretino's  dedication  of  his  second 
volume  of  letters  to  Henry  VIII.  "O  supreme  arbiter 
of  peace  and  war,  temporal  and  spiritual,  do  not  be  indig- 
nant that  the  universe  does  not  dedicate  to  you  temples 
and  erect  to  you  altars  as  to  one  of  the  more  sublime 
Numi,  because  the  infinite  number  of  your  immense  deeds 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  5. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  this  sort  of  writing  was  invented  by  Aretino. 
He  only  practises  well  a  common  style.  His  contemporary,  Agrippa  of  Nette- 
sheim,  a  native  of  Cologne,  thus  addresses  Marguerite  of  Valois  in  the  dedi- 
cation of  his  Treatise  "On  the  Nobility  and  Excellence  of  the  Feminine  Sex." 

"To  you,  Divine  Marguerite,  whose  like  the  five  divinities  of  light  have 
never  illumined  among  all  the  illustrious  women  there  ever  have  been,  there 
are,  or  there  ever  will  be  on  the  earth,  either  for  the  glory  of  beautiful  deeds, 
or  nobility  of  blood,  or  for  excellence  of  virtues  to  you  I  say  Princess  incompar- 
able and  truly  unique  in  your  kind  *  *  *  I  dedicate  this  book,  as  by  the 
distinction  of  your  life  and  manners  you  have  mounted  to  a  pinnacle  of  merit 
which  elevates  you  infinitely  above  all  the  good  which  could  ever  be  said  of  the 
feminine  sex,"  etc.,  etc.  Leiden,  1726.  Vol.  I,  page  35. 

•Aretino,  I^ttere,  II,  201. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  101 

keeps  it  confused,  just  as  the  sun  would  confound  us  if 
nature,  taking  it  from  its  place,  should  place  it  close  to 
our  eyes."  * 

In  this  exchange  of  "servitu"  for  "cortesia,"  Aretino 
was  simply  carrying  into  literature  the  relation  of  the 
mercenary  soldier  to  his  patron.  As  the  Swiss  guards  of 
the  Tuileries  two  centuries  later  felt  bound  to  die  for  their 
bread,  so  Aretino  felt  bound  to  exalt  and  defend  the  glory 
of  those  who  sustained  his  genius.  He  writes  to  Signer 
Luigi  Gonzaga, — "I  was  always,  Signore,  and  always 
will  be  as  faithful  to  my  patrons  as  to  my  friends  and 
unless  I  am  given  cause  of  offense,  would  rather  die  than 
attack  the  honour  of  another."  2 

He  had  written  three  letters  to  Cromwell,  the  all  power- 
ful minister  of  England.3 

He  reminded  Cromwell  how  much  his  pen  could  do  for 
his  fame.  Cromwell  has  left  in  one  of  his  memoranda 
a  note,  "To  remember  Pietro  Aretino  for  some  reward."  * 
But  death  surprised  him  before  he  could  carry  out  his  pur- 
pose. He  had,  however,  been  useful  in  urging  Henry 
VIII  to  send  a  large  present  to  Aretino,  and  Pietro  hear- 
ing of  his  fall  and  execution  writes, — "I  am  sorry  for 
such  a  misfortune  because  I  had  some  benefit  from  him 
and  well  would  it  have  been  for  him  if  the  'cortesia' 
shown  me  by  commission  of  the  illustrious  Henry,  had 
been  mixed  with  his  own  personal  liberality.  As  it  is,  I 

1  Dedicatory  Epistle  to  Vol.  II.  Lettere. 

2  Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  76. 

3  One   is   in    Lettere,   Vol.   II,   137.      One  is  calendared   Letters   and    Papers 
of  Henry  VIII,  Vol.  XIV,  part  2,  No.  712.     The  other  is  an  Italian  fragment 
printed   without  signature,   Vol.   XIV,   part  2,  number  716.     Any  one   familiar 
with  Pietro's  style  can  recognize  these  fragmentary  sentences  as  his. 

*  Utters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  Vol.  XV,  page  71. 


102  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

will  never  put  out  of  my  memory  that  I  was  once  grateful 
to  him."  1 

In  thus  hiring  himself  out  as  a  giver  of  immortality, 
Aretino  was  playing  on  the  common  weakness  of  the  men 
of  his  day,  an  insatiable  desire  for  fame.  This  craving 
for  glory,  which  possessed  the  age  like  an  infectious  dis- 
ease, was  not  the  desire  to  be  praised  by  those  who  knew, 
for  doing  well  things  worth  doing, — but  a  passion  largely 
vulgar, — a  thirst  to  be  known  among  one's  fellows  for 
anything  and  everything,  a  material  pride  that  made  all 
ears  itch  for  even  the  coarsest  flattery.  This  liking  for 
applause  beset  the  men  of  the  Renascence.  One  has  only 
to  glance  at  a  book  which  shows  the  best  side  of  the 
society  of  the  first  generation  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
the  Cortigiano  of  Castiglione,  to  see  that  he  advises  the 
perfect  gentleman  to  be  always,  in  every  act  of  his  life, 
playing  to  the  gallery. 

Aretino  has  given  perhaps  the  most  striking  descrip- 
tion of  this  characteristic  passion  of  his  age — this  thirst 
and  hunger  for  praise  which  made  fame  seem  almost  like 
a  material  thing  to  be  eaten  and  drunk.  "I  do  not  know 
the  pleasure  misers  feel  in  the  sound  of  the  gold  they 
count,  but  I  know  well  that  the  blessed  spirits  do  not  hear 
music  which  is  more  grateful  than  the  harmony  which 
comes  out  of  one's  own  praises.  One  feeds  on  it  as  in 
paradise  the  souls  feed  on  the  vision  of  God."  *  He 
writes  to  the  Cardinal  of  Trent  at  the  baths, — "Although 
it  may  be  that  crowds  of  friends,  a  swift  succession  of 
pleasures,  harmony  of  instruments,  the  sight  of  jewels, 

1  Aretino,  Lettcre,  II,  161. 
•Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  100. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  103 

the  suavity  of  odours,  the  delicate  folds  of  drapery,  the 
pleasantness  of  books,  the  joyfulness  of  songs  and  agree- 
able conversations,  may  not  seem  to  you  suited  to  your 
pious  dignity,  you  can  enjoy  instead  of  such  pastimes,  the 
thought  of  your  own  merits,  recreating  your  senses  and 
spirits  with  the  goodness  which  all  people  perceive  in  you, 
for  which  grace  all  men  bow  before  you,  praise  you,  and 
watch  you.  Certainly  there  is  no  joy  which  surpasses  the 
joy  of  him  who  is  not  only  known  as  good  but  is  approved 
as  the  best."  * 

It  was  the  shrewd  choice  of  a  man  who  knew  his  public 
which  led  Aretino  to  give  up  the  small  gains  of  book- 
selling to  levy  heavy  tribute  on  the  vanity  of  the  great  men 
of  his  day.  And  he  would  not  sell  flattery  at  retail.  He 
writes  Signer  S.  G. — "I  have  sent  back  the  ten  ducats 
to  your  friend,  begging  him  on  receiving  back  your  gift  to 
return  the  praises  I  gave  you.  Because  it  does  not  seem 
to  me  the  part  of  an  honest  man,  to  honor  one  who  vi- 
tuperates me  as  you  would  have  vituperated  me,  if  I  had 
accepted  what  is  rather  an  alms  given  to  a  beggar  than  a 
present  to  a  man  of  genius.  Certainly  those  who  buy 
fame  must  be  generous  minded,  giving  not  according  to 
the  rank  of  their  souls  but  as  the  condition  of  him  to 
whom  they  give  demands ;  because  the  poor  ink  has  a  hard 
task  in  trying  to  exalt  the  name  which  is  weighed  down 
as  if  by  lead  by  every  sort  of  demerits."  2 

The  passion  for  fame  had  another  side,  and  the  auda- 
cious cleverness  of  Aretino's  scheme  for  coining  his  repu- 
tation cannot  be  appreciated  until  we  have  looked  at  it. 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  70. 
•  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  268. 


104  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

The  love  of  flattery  seldom  fails  to  breed  an  extreme 
touchiness.  The  man  greedy  of  adulation,  shrinks  with 
an  agony  of  dislike  from  dispraise.  If  the  Italian  of  the 
Renascence  was  apt  for  satiric  speech,  he  paid  for  his  evil 
tongue  by  a  thin  skin,  sensitive  to  every  malicious  breath. 
Even  to-day  among  the  Latin  races  where  the  Renascence 
flourished  in  its  vigour,  there  is  a  lasting  sense  of  wrong 
for  verbal  insult  "injures,"  "oltraggi,"  which  the  English- 
speaking  race,  used  to  a  word  and  a  blow,  or  to  words 
forgotten,  finds  it  hard  to  appreciate.  And  Aretino 
counted  on  this  shrinking  hatred  of  mordant  words  to 
bring  in  his  tribute  from  those  who  thought  the  price  of 
his  praise  too  high. 

When  he  came  to  Venice  he  had  won  by  his  pasqui- 
nades and  his  comedy  a  great  reputation,  and  his  specialty 
was  "maldicentia."  It  was  admitted  that  he  had  the 
worst  tongue  in  Italy.  In  his  Giudizi  his  running  com- 
ment on  events,  his  irregular  newspaper  mixing  news  with 
editorials,  he  found  a  field  for  his  power  of  satire. 
It  became  the  object  of  every  prince  in  Italy  to  keep  out 
of  the  giudizi  the  facts  of  his  career  or  the  traits  of  his 
character  which  would  bring  cynical  laughter  instead  of 
applause.  From  the  time  he  went  to  Venice  until  his 
death,  Aretino  asserted  that  he  had  a  divine  mission, — to 
punish  the  vices  of  princes  and  expose  the  hypocrisy  of 
priests.  This  is  what  he  meant  by  calling  himself  "the 
fifth  evangelist." 

One  cannot  turn  over  five  pages  of  his  letters 
without  finding  vague  allusions  to  the  crimes  which 
haunt  princely  courts,  and  the  vileness  by  which  prelates 
rose  to  power  at  Rome.  For  example,  promising  to  write 


PIETRO  ARETINO  105 

regularly,  he  adds, — "And  in  case  I  fail,  put  it  down  to 
the  fault  of  a  certain  beastly  desire  to  resemble  princes. 
And  not  being  able  to  do  so  with  any  other  mask  than  that 
of  lies,  it  may  be  that  I  make  this  promise  keeping  it  in 
the  way  they  keep  theirs."  *  Asked  by  a  preacher  to 
define  "charity,"  he  answers, — "A  friar's  hood,  because 
the  shadow  of  its  sanctity  covers  the  multitude  of  the  vile 
progeny  of  your  hypocritical  actions."  2  A  certain  trans- 
action, he  says,  would  be  dishonest  "even  among  cardi- 
nals." "If,"  he  writes  to  the  Spaniard  Don  Luigi 
d'Avila,  "from  being  Italian  one  could  change  into  a 
Spaniard,  as  from  being  a  Christian  one  can  change  into 
a  priest,"  etc.  Through  all  his  letters  runs  a  stream  of 
such  allusions  to  the  meanness  and  bad  faith  of  princes 
or  to  the  hypocrisy  of  all  ranks  in  the  church.  These 
allusions  in  his  published  letters  are  for  the  most  part 
vague.  Occasionally,  indeed,  where  the  pay  of  one  of  his 
patrons  had  been  too  long  delayed,  he  becomes  more 
pointed.  He  writes  to  Signer  Giovanni  Dandalotto: 
"The  fact  that  the  gift  which,  through  the  influence  of 
your  excellency,  was  promised  to  me  by  the  distinguished 
brother  of  the  Emperor,  has  not  materialized,  lessens  the 
dignity  of  his  crown,  injures  your  intercessions  and  dis- 
honours my  virtu." 3  He  goes  a  little  farther  with 
Count  Massimiano  Stampa :  "It  is  so  difficult  to  decide, 
O  Marchese,  which  is  greater,  the  praise  with  which  I 
exalt  your  honours  or  the  trick  with  which  you  deride  my 
hopes,  that  I  keep  silent  about  it, — and  in  my  silence  I  am 

»Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  48. 
*Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  258. 
•Aretino,  L«ttere,  I,  60. 


106  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

sorrier  for  myself  who  believe  in  you  than  for  you  wHo 
trick  me, — because  my  trustfulness  comes  from  a  certain 
stupid  simplicity  of  nature  and  your  cheating  me  comes 
from  princely  malevolence,  wherefore  in  such  a  matter 
I  am  more  worthy  of  excuse  than  you  of  blame. 1  And 
sometimes  he  names  prelates  who  for  him  incarnate  the 
hypocrisy  he  denounces  in  the  church.  But  these  pas- 
sages, though  not  few  among  his  published  letters,  would 
hardly  have  maintained,  amidst  the  strong  competition  of 
the  day,  his  reputation  of  having  the  most  dangerous 
tongue  in  the  world.  This  reputation,  absolutely  neces- 
sary for  keeping  at  its  highest  figure  the  income  he  drew 
from  his  profession,  he  maintained  in  his  Giudizi,  his 
satiric  verses  and  in  unpublished  letters ;  pieces  circulated 
for  the  most  part  in  manuscript.  By  these  less  public 
writings  he  could  cause  fear  without  giving  deadly  offense. 
If  necessary,  he  could  disavow  them. 

The  choice  which  Aretino  presented  to  kings  and  great 
men  was  a  very  simple  one.  An  eulogistic  letter  assured 
them  of  his  desire  to  spread  their  fame  and  make  them 
immortal.  Not  to  accept  the  offer  was  to  run  the  risk  of 
being  pilloried  for  the  laughter  of  Italy.  This  literary 
mill,  whose  upper  stone  was  flattery  and  its  lower  satire, 
squeezed  from  the  vanity  of  men  a  steady  stream  of  gold 
for  its  ingenious  author.  The  plan  was  not  entirely  orig- 
inal. In  the  fifteenth  century  the  sale  of  eulogy  and  in- 
vective had  been  common  among  the  humanists,  but 
Aretino  first  assembled  and  arranged  the  rude  and  ele- 
mentary devices  of  his  predecessors.  And  he  drew  from 
his  machine  a  large  incomt  which  enabled  him  to  live  in 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  184. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  107 

far  better  style  than  Erasmus,  the  acknowledged  king  of 
letters. 

From  the  seventeenth  century  on,  writers  have  ex- 
panded in  severe  epithets  on  the  infamy  of  this  system. 
One  obvious  thing  seems  to  have  escaped  them.  If  the 
system  had  seemed  in  its  own  day  too  infamous  it  could 
not  have  been  so  successful.  The  utterances  of  a  ribald 
blackmailer,  looked  down  on  by  all  honest  men  as  infam- 
ous, could  not  have  steadily  flattered  pride  nor  stirred  fear. 
Nor  did  Aretino  try  to  hide  his  practices.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  made  so  clear  an  explanation  of  his  system  in 
letters  he  printed  that  we  trace  it  entirely  in  them. 

He  claims  as  his  proudest  title  the  inscription  stamped 
on  one  of  his  medals,  Flagellum  Principum,  the  Scourge 
of  Princes.  He  is  never  tired  of  asserting  his  readiness 
to  shake  the  lash  over  vice,  and  the  divine  blessing  on  his 
task,  and  he  boasts  of  the  gains  of  satire. 

His  letters  abound  with  passages  like  the  following: 
"Believe  me  I  am  the  same  good  companion  I  was  in  old 
days,  and  my  joyful  amiability  has  grown  with  my  grow- 
ing reputation  and  ease  of  life.  The  weight  of  years 
would  seem  light  to  me  if  I  were  not  fat.  The  fault  of 
my  increase  of  flesh  many  attribute  to  the  happiness  with 
which  God  has  surrounded  me,  and  the  talents  he  has 
showered  on  me  by  His  grace.  And  I  confess  it,  because 
mummies  would  be  restored  to  life  if  the  world  continually 
visited  them  with  tribute.  And  for  that  I  render  thanks 
to  Christ,  because  certainly  these  things  are  His  gifts  and 
not  our  merits." 

"If  I  were  not  worthy  of  any  honour  for  the  origin- 
ality with  which  I  give  life  to  style,  I  merit  at  least  a  little 


io8  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

glory  for  having  forced  truth  into  the  ante-chambers  and 
the  ears  of  the  great  ones  of  the  world,  to  the  shame  of 
adulation  and  falsehood.  And  not  to  defraud  my  rank 
I  will  quote  the  words  which  fell  from  the  sacred  mouth 
of  the  great  Antonio  da  Leyva :  'Aretino  is  more  neces- 
sary to  life  than  sermons,  for  they  direct  towards  the  right 
way  only  simple  people,  but  his  writings  men  of  birth  and 
power'."  1 

He  writes  to  his  publisher  Marcolini, — "In  case  you 
hear  it  said  again  that  great  men  give  me  money  every 
day  for  fear  and  not  for  love,  consider  it  a  sign  of  my 
greatness.  Certainly  if  I  were  a  prince  I  should  choose 
to  be  loved  rather  than  to  be  feared.  As  I  am  Pietro,  I 
think  it  better  for  lords  to  fear  me  than  to  love  me.  The 
judgment  you  report  is  nothing  but  ignorance  and  malig- 
nity. The  envy  of  many  really  exalts  me  while  it  tries  to 
abuse  me.  In  very  truth,  I  must  be  a  terrible  man  since 
kings  and  emperors  give  me  presents  out  of  fear.  So 
compose  yourself  in  peace  about  it  without  getting 
angry."  2 

He  is  equally  frank  in  showing  the  gains  of  his  service 
and  his  willingness,  to  rent  either  silence  or  speech. 

He  speaks  of  "one  of  those  presents  which  princes 
often  give  me,  I  hardly  know  whether  to  say  out  of  fear 
or  out  of  liberality,"  3  etc.  "Oh,  if  princes  (who  do  not 
drive  me  to  despair  by  giving  nothing  that  I  may  not 
vituperate  them,  and  do  not  console  me  by  giving  me 
enough  in  order  that  I  may  not  fear  them),  could  only 

1  Aretino  I<cttere,  I,  254. 

•  Aretino  Lettere,  III,  89. 

*  Aretino  Lettere,  II,  187. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  109 

take  the  middle  path,"  J  etc.  He  points  out  that  "the 
gifts  of  kings  ought  to  be  not  only  quick,  but  frequent 
like  drops  of  rain.  Their  majesties  ought  to  remember 
continually  a  man  of  talent;  otherwise  they  give  him 
reason  to  talk  too  much;  whence  their  fame  and  their 
courts  get  a  bad  reputation."  2  He  often  threatens  "the 
vendettas  of  ink  more  eternal  than  the  offenses  of  blood." 
"The  stinginess  of  promises  and  the  tenacity  of  avarice 
are  a  reason  for  acting  badly,  not  simply  for  speaking 
badly ;  and  if  they  don't  look  out,  I  will  put  an  ornament 
on  the  face  of  the  name  of  somebody  which  shall  stand 
for  a  sign  until  the  day  of  judgment."  4  One  of  his 
medals  shows  on  the  reverse  Aretino  seated  while  figures 
bring  him  gifts,  and  the  inscription  is  "Princes  supported 
by  the  tribute  of  their  people  bring  tribute  to  their 
servant." 

He  thought  he  had  done  a  great  service  to  literature  in 
systematizing  this  commercial  use  of  invective  and  eulogy, 
and  calls  himself  the  "Redeemer  of  Genius  who  has  re- 
stored her  to  her  ancient  place!"  "Her  glory  was 
dimmed  by  the  shadows  of  the  avarice  of  men  of  power, 
and  before  I  began  to  lacerate  their  names,  men  of  genius 
begged  the  honest  necessaries  of  life.  And  if  some  one 
rose  above  the  pressure  of  necessity,  he  did  it  as  a  buffoon 
and  not  as  a  person  of  merit.  My  pen  armed  with  its 
terrors  has  brought  matters  to  such  a  pass  that  the  Sig- 
nori,  coming  to  themselves,  have  cherished  great  intellects 
with  enforced  'cortesia.'  "  5 


1  Aretino,  Lettere 
'Aretino,  Lettere 
3  Aretino,  Lettere 
•Aretino,  Lettere 
6  Aretino,  Lettere 


II,  244. 
II.  76. 
II,  254. 
II,  14. 
I,  85. 


I  io  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Conscious  of  this  great  service,  he  was  convinced  that 
the  world  owed  him  the  splendid  living  he  drew  from  the 
vices  and  merits  he  praised  or  blamed.  For  he  naively 
writes  in  thanking  the  new  Duke  of  Florence  for  money, 
— "The  cortesia  shown  me  is  an  augury  of  felicity  for  the 
reign  of  his  Excellency,  because  none  give  to  me  but  true 
princes  who  reign  by  the  choice  of  God  and  by  the  counsel 
of  good  men."  * 

This  easy  conscience  about  his  work  is  the  more  em- 
phasized by  the  pious  phrases  which  run  through  his  let- 
ters. Aretino  considers  himself  an  excellent  churchman 
and  a  good  Christian.  To  attack  the  corruptions  of  the 
clergy  and  the  Roman  court  was  not  of  course  in  the  least 
incompatible  with  piety  and  orthodoxy.  Some  of  the 
saints  had  done  it  in  the  past ;  some  of  the  apologetes  of 
the  Church  against  schism  did  it  in  his  own  day.  Heresy 
Aretino  always  hated.  He  makes  many  hostile  allusions 
to  Luther.  Writing  to  a  young  friend  at  the  Uni- 
versity, he  reproves  him  for  eating  meat  all  the  time; 
because  Fridays  and  Lent  are  the  days  of  God,  the  rest 
of  the  year  belongs  to  man.  But  he  adds,  that  he  feels 
sure  this  only  comes  from  careless  willingness  to  imitate 
bad  example,  and  not  because  of  any  "belief  you  give  to 
Luther,  that  diabolical  spirit."  2  He  congratulates  the 
Cardinal  of  Trent  on  the  services  of  Vergerio,  who  has 
"not  only  become  a  trumpet  of  the  gospel  and  a  key  to  the 
doors  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  but  thunderbolts  and  light- 
ning flashes  against  the  head  of  the  heresy  of  Luther. 
*  *  *  He  has  composed  three  homilies  on  the  subject 

1  Aretino,  L,ettere,  I,  126. 
1  Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  99. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  in 

of  the  heresy  of  Germany,  whose  object  is  to  uncover  the 
poisonous  intent  of  those  who,  under  the  veil  of  religion, 
are  bringing  about  the  ruin  of  states,  of  princes  and  of 
souls,  overthrowing  laws,  customs,  loyalty  and  peoples."  1 

He  is  a  great  admirer  of  strong  preaching,  and  often 
speaks  of  the  pleasure  or  profit  he  had  gained  in  listening 
to  this  or  that  "trumpet  of  the  gospel."  2  He  wanted  to 
hear  practical  and  simple  sermons.  He  is  very  strong 
against  those  "Reverend  Fathers  who  keep  shouting  in  the 
pulpits  about  how  the  divine  word  became  incarnate  in 
Mary,  or  in  what  way  the  dust  and  flesh  and  bones  thrown 
to  the  winds  or  scattered  through  the  sea  can  come  to- 
gether and  rise  again  to  life.  Certainly  the  temerity  of 
such  themes  is  a  reproach  to  Christ  for  having  said  noth- 
ing about  them.  *  *  *  We  go  to  church  free  from 
doubts  which  the  perverse  raise  in  questions  of  religion, 
and  expecting  to  hear  the  preaching  of  the  gospel.  We 
hear  strifes  and  disputes  which  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  gospel  or  with  our  sins." 

The  interest  Pietro  took  in  religion,  an  interest  shown 
in  repeated  passages  in  his  letters,  cannot  be  better  illus- 
trated than  by  a  letter  he  wrote  to  a  parish  priest  of  his 
neighborhood, — "The  dignity  of  the  higher  offices  of  the 
church,  the  mitre  and  the  cardinal's  hat,  would  become 
you,  Reverend  Father,  because  you  neglect  nothing  which 
is  for  the  praise  and  honour  of  that  little  church  of  which 
you  are  the  worthy  custodian.  Therefore,  you  have  the 
name  of  a  good  priest.  And  this  is  confirmed  with  loud 
voice  by  all  the  people  who  see  how  you  study  to  enlarge 

1Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  66. 
•Aretino,  lyettere,  I,  178. 


H2  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  present  building.  Meanwhile  you  divide  the  small  sal- 
ary which  comes  from  the  parish  among  strangers,  the 
sick  and  the  poor,  until  one  might  wonder  how  you  can 
buy  bread  to  eat,  let  alone  providing  the  other  necessaries 
of  life.  However,  the  grace  of  God  beholding  such  charity 
transubstantiates  itself  into  what  you  need.  You  are  so 
much  'the  fervent  and  careful  father  of  everybody  who 
lives  in  the  parish,  which  obeys  you  in  Christ  at  the  temple 
which  decorates  you  with  its  title,  that  everybody  feels  like 
a  son  towards  you ;  and  I  for  my  part  not  only  love  you 
with  the  zeal  of  a  son,  but  reverence  you  with  the  purest 
sincerity,  because  I  consider  you  a  model  of  that  spiritual 
care  which  belongs  to  all  those  who  have  the  oversight 
of  our  souls.  You  who  control  the  income  of  the  treasury 
of  the  merits  of  the  crucified  Jesus,  must  dispense  it  in 
the  benefits  of  the  altar,  of  masses,  of  the  divine  offices, 
of  offerings,  of  incense  and  lights,  of  sacerdotal  orna- 
ments, of  baptisms  and  of  communions ;  and  loving  your 
neighbour  with  pure  purpose,  aid  with  what  you  spread 
before  them  the  cravings  of  the  spiritual  hunger  of  those 
whose  pastor  you  are.  Religious  privileges  must  be 
shared  in  a  holy  way,  and  the  food  of  Christ  distributed 
according  to  His  teachings.  And  woe  to  him  who  uses 
them  differently.  But  what  shall  I  say,  O  honest  and 
excellent  man,  of  the  reputation  you  have  gained  by  your 
goodness  in  inviting  every  preacher  of  good  fame,  holy 
life  and  sound  doctrine  to  come  and  expound  the  divine 
word  in  your  pulpit?  Which  is  to  you  a  source  of  clear 
commendation  and  to  us  of  evident  salvation.  Twice, 
thanks  to  you,  we  have  heard  Fra.  Bernardino  da  Siena — 


PIETRO  ARETINO  113 

twice,  I  say  we  have  heard  him,  thanks  to  you,  and  for 
that  alone  you  deserve  to  be  remembered.  Because  his 
Apostolic  voice,  his  catholic  words,  make  the  guilty  good 
and  the  perfect  justified.  Therefore,  rejoice  in  yourself, 
thanking  the  Saviour  for  the  power  you  have  with  his 
creatures,  and  while  you  do  this,  take  pleasure  also  in  the 
gentleness  of  your  affable  profession,  whose  human  kind- 
ness opens  the  very  bottom  of  every  one's  heart."  1 

These  various  traits  of  Aretino,  his  lack  of  shame  for 
pornographic  writing,  the  brutal  immorality  of  his  life,  his 
sense  of  high  moral  service  to  the  world,  his  thanks  to  God 
for  the  gifts  he  used  in  that  service,  his  interest  in  religion, 
his  self  complacency  and  his  frank  exposition  of  willing- 
ness to  praise  the  virtues  of  the  princes  who  paid  him  not 
to  denounce  their  vices,  are  hard  to  unite  into  a  consistent 
character.  And  most  writers  have  solved  the  problem  in 
portraiture  by  the  easy  device  of  labeling  him  a  blatant 
hypocrite.  But  to  see  him  set  forth  in  his  own  letters  as 
we  can  see  Benvenuto  Cellini  in  his  autobiography,  is  to 
perceive  that  Aretino,  while  not  without  a  tinge  of  hypoc- 
risy, took  himself  on  the  whole  at  his  own  high  valuation 
— and  one  who  does  not  believe  that  this  may  be  true, 
has  not  begun  to  know  the  men  of  the  Renascence. 

Italy  of  the  early  sixteenth  century  was  in  a  strange  con- 
dition, at  once  fecund  and  decadent.  She  produced  mira- 
cles of  art  and  praised  extravagantly  puerilities  and  ob- 
scenities in  literature.  She  sang  hymns  to  love  and 
looked  on  woman  as  the  prey  of  the  senses.  Her  men 
joined  a  passionate  desire  for  fame  to  an  atrophied  sense 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  299. 


U4  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

of  duty.  Her  proud  cities  hated  and  betrayed  each  other, 
while  France  and  Spain  wasted  her  fields,  and  the  Turk 
swept  thousands  of  slaves  from  her  coasts.  The  rulers 
of  the  institutions  she  held  in  trust  for  the  world  spent 
their  thought  and  the  church  treasure  in  Italian  politics, 
their  leisure  in  watching  Raphael  and  Michael  Angelo, 
while  Europe,  north  of  the  Alps,  was  breaking  from  the 
unity  of  Christ.  That  brilliant  blooming  time  of  human 
genius  we  call  the  Italian  Renascence,  gave  to  all  nations 
a  new  impulse  in  art  and  learning,  strengthened  in  the 
world  the  desire  for  truth  and  beauty,  but  the  atmosphere 
it  bred  in  Italy  at  its  height,  was  at  once  glorious  and 
shameful, — stimulating  and  corrupting.  If  we  wish  to 
know  it  we  must  look  at  the  men  it  bred  as  they  were,  and 
not  at  descriptions  of  what  we  suppose  them  to  have  been, 
arranged  under  the  rubrics  of  our  own  moral  categories. 

To  account  for  the  success  of  Aretino's  masterly  organi- 
zation of  the  crude  methods  of  the  humanists  for  the  sale 
of  eulogies  and  invectives,  writers  have  pointed  out  that 
there  is  a  resemblance  between  his  Giudizi  and  the  modern 
newspaper.  It  is  suggested  that  Charles  V,  who  paid 
Aretino  more  than  he  paid  Titian,  knew  what  he  was 
about  in  subsidising  a  rising  power — the  power  of  the 
press.  It  would  be  easy  to  spend  several  malicious  and 
partly  true  pages,  suggesting  certain  similarities  between 
Aretino's  methods  and  style  and  those  of  some  news- 
papers, and  there  is  truth  in  the  comparison,  but  not 
enough  to  make  us  attribute  too  much  force  to  the  motive. 
Charles  V  may  have  shrewdly  calculated  that  the 
pen  of  Aretino  might  arouse  or  allay  certain  hostilities  to 
his  policy,  but  we  know  that  when  his  ambassador  first 


PIETRO  ARETINO  115 

advised  Him  to  put  Aretino  on  a  pension,  it  was  for  fear 
he  might  publish  a  particular  private  scandal  about  the 
Emperor's  life  which  was  already  talked  about  and 
thought  to  be  true. 

And  in  addition,  the  power  of  the  press  has  risen  with 
the  power  of  democracy.  Now,  while  Aretino  was  living 
at  Venice,  the  democracy  everywhere  throughout  Italy 
was  either  dying  or  dead..  Public  opinion  in  the  sense  of  a 
general  moral  judgment  producing  political  effects,  did 
not  exist  in  the  Peninsula.  Charles  V,  who  made  a  bas- 
tard Medici  Duke  of  Florence,  and  built  a  fortress  in 
Siena  to  hold  a  Spanish  garrison,  had  little  reason  to 
fear  the  political  effect  of  public  opinion. 

Aretino's  letters  did  not  always  bring  golden  answers. 
Little  unpleasantnesses  occasionally  arose.  He  found 
it  hard  to  hold  his  insolent  tongue  even  about  his 
patrons.  His  greed  kept  him  in  intermittent  irritation 
over  the  smallness  or  delay  of  their  payments,  and  they 
resented  things  he  said  not  intended  for  their  ears.  Here, 
for  instance,  is  a  letter  received  in  1530  by  the  Ambassa- 
dor of  Mantua  in  Venice, — "His  excellency  understands 
that  Pietro  Aretino  cannot  stop  talking  evil  about  his 
servants  and  his  court,  and  that  he  threatens  to  say  more. 
Give  him  to  understand  that  if  from  now  on  he  opens  his 
mouth  to  talk,  or  his  hand  to  write  about  the  smallest  per- 
sonage, not  simply  of  his  excellency's  court,  but  of  Man- 
tua, the  Duke  will  be  as  much  offended  as  if  the  words  ap- 
plied to  his  own  person;  and  that,  by  the  body  of  Jesus 
Christ,  he  will  have  him  given  ten  dagger  thrusts  in  the 
middle  of  the  Rialto.  He  has  had  enough  of  his  evil 
tongue ;  let  him  look  to  himself.  The  Duke  does  not  feel 


n6  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

like  bearing  it  any  longer,  and  even  though  he  does  send 
him  the  copyist  he  asks  for,  it  is  not  because  he  is  afraid 
of  his  threats."  1  As  the  last  sentence  suggests,  this  letter 
did  not  need  to  be  taken  very  seriously.  These  quarrels, 
though  they  often  arose,  seldom  broke  finally  the  relations 
of  Aretino  and  his  patrons.  He  needed  their  gold  pieces ; 
they  knew  that  flattery  masked  universal  envy  eager  to 
laugh  or  sneer.  The  scratch  of  Aretino's  quill  calling  the 
harpies  to  the  feast  of  scandal,  turned  their  self  compla- 
cency into  an  agony  of  mortified  vanity.  Aretino  might 
well  sign  himself — "Free  man  by  the  grace  of  God."  In 
an  age  when  all  men  feared  princes,  his  keen  mastery  of 
their  common  weakness  made  all  princes  fear  him.  At 
the  same  time  it  must  be  true  that  genuine  admiration  had 
a  large  place  in  the  motives  of  Aretino's  tributaries.  In 
the  Bibliotheque  Nationale  in  Paris,  there  are  five  of 
Aretino's  works  bound  with  the  arms  of  Francis  I. 

Even  in  Venice,  however,  where  justice  was  often 
firmly  done  and  assassination  comparatively  dangerous, 
Aretino  did  not  always  come  off  with  idle  threats.  The 
pension  promised  him  by  Henry  VIII  was  not  paid  as 
promptly  as  Aretino  wished,  and  he  said  that  Harwell, 
the  English  agent,  kept  the  money.  Harwell,  walking 
with  his  servants,  met  Aretino  on  the  street  and  gave  him 
a  sound  thrashing.  Against  this  violence  Aretino  ap- 
pealed successfully  to  the  sympathy  of  his  contemporaries. 
The  incident  unquestionably  suggests  the  difficulties  with 
which  any  one  trying  to  carry  on  his  trade  in  countries 
north  of  the  Alps,  would  have  found  the  path  to  fortune 
beset.  The  Italian  of  the  sixteenth  century  thought  ven- 

1  Luzio,  Pietro  Aretino  nei  primi  suoi  anni,  etc.     Document!  XXXVIIL 


PIETRO  ARETINO  117 

geance  the  sacred  duty  of  a  gentleman,  but  only  a  refined 
and  deliberate  punishment  was  worthy  of  a  man  of  cul- 
ture. If  Harwell  had  hired  another  Achilles  della  Volta 
to  stab  Aretino,  there  would  have  been  no  shock  to  public 
opinion.  To  give  him  a  public  thrashing  seemed  to 
Italian  society  coarse  and  brutal.  Which  of  these  two 
views  is  the  less  objectionable  is  a  question  of  taste  on 
which  Latin  and  Teuton  will  be  apt  to  differ  to  the  end 
of  time. 

There  is  another  story  about  a  man  who  knew  how  to 
treat  Aretino,  so  good  that  the  student  is  sorry  to  find 
his  suspicion  that  is  too  good  to  be  true,  confirmed. 
Tintoretto  was  a  man  with  whom  it  was  ill  jesting.  His 
manners  were  at  times  unconventional.  When  a  self 
elected  critic  was  explaining  to  a  crowd  of  visitors  who 
infested  his  studio,  that  though  other  artists  painted  more 
slowly  than  Tintoretto,  they  painted  more  correctly,  he 
broke  into  the  discourse,  "That  is,  because  they  haven't  a 
lot  of  bores  around  them  as  I  have."  Tradition  has  it 
that  Aretino  had  been  talking  about  Tintoretto.  The 
young  painter  meeting  the  too  talkative  man  of  letters  in 
the  street,  invited  him  to  his  house.  He  said  he  wanted  to 
paint  his  portrait.  Aretino  went,  and  when  he  was  about 
to  sit  down,  Tintoretto  suddenly  produced  a  long  pistol. 
The  frightened  Aretino,  thinking  the  time  was  come  to 
pay  old  scores,  commenced  to  cry  out — "Jacopo,  what  are 
you  going  to  do?"  He  answered — "Oh  be  quiet  and  let 
me  take  your  measure;"  and  going  from  head  to  foot  he 
said — "You  are  just  two  pistols  and  a  half  long."  Are- 
tino merely  answered — "Well,  you  are  a  great  lunatic  and 


1 18  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

never  act  like  anyone  else."     But  he  was  not  anxious  to 
backbite  him  again  and  became  his  friend.1 

The  path  of  Aretino  was  not  always  strewn  with  com- 
pliments. Several  of  his  contemporaries  attacked  him 
with  tremendous  bitterness.  Two  of  the  most  determined 
of  these  denouncers  were  young  men  he  had  befriended 
and  kept  in  his  house.  Franco  had  been  rescued  from 
misery  by  Aretino,  who  employed  him  as  secretary  and 
in  the  first  edition  of  his  letters  praised  him  highly.  After 
he  had  been  driven  out  of  the  house,  Franco  waged  a  des- 
perate fight  against  his  former  patron,  chiefly  in  sonnets, 
many  of  which  rival  in  obscenity  the  worst  of  Aretino's 
lines.  One  of  them  in  praise  of  the  murderous  Achilles  da 
Bologna,  ends :  "He  is  worthy  of  fame  even  though  he 
failed,  for  at  least  he  longed  to  free  the  world  of  its 
shame."  Another  on  Titian's  portrait  of  Aretino,  con- 
gratulates the  "brush  more  than  divine,"  on  the  triumph 
of  having  "enclosed  with  a  little  square  all  the  infamy  of 
our  age."  2  Early  in  the  quarrel,  another  of  the  young 
men  of  Aretino's  household  stabbed  Franco  in  the  face 
on  the  street.  After  Franco  had  fled  from  Venice,  Are- 
tino wrote  a  few  letters  in  which  he  handled  him  without 
gloves.  But  on  the  whole,  he  did  not  try  to  keep  up  his 
side  of  the  literary  warfare.  In  one  of  his  letters  he 
uttered  the  careless  vituperation — "You  are  destined  by 
your  own  sins  to  the  gallows  *  *  *."  3  Time  made 
it  a  prophecy;  twelve  years  after  Aretino's  death,  Pope 

1  Quoted  from  Carlo  Ridolfi,  Vite  de'Pittori  Venezianl.  Venezia,  1648,  by 
Mazzuchelli  in  Vita  di  Pietro  Aretino,  Eclizione  Seconda,  Brescia,  1763,  page  75. 
Ridolfi  quotes  no  authority  for  the  story. 

1  Quoted  by  Mazzuchelli,  page  163,  from  Delle  Rime  di  M.  Niccolo  Franco 
qontro  Pietro  Aretino.  Terza  Kdizione,  1548. 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  V,  31?, 


PIETRO  ARETINO  119 

Pius  V  hanged  Franco  in  Rome  as  punishment  for  a  rabid 
attack  on  his  predecessor. 

Antonio  Francesco  Doni  had  been  a  close  friend  and  a 
warm  admirer  of  Aretino.  In  1538  he  wrote  Aretino  the 
following  letter, — "I  hope  to  tell  you  in  four  words  what 
fame  says  of  your  good  nature  *  *  *  Listen :  Five 
gentlemen,  all  litterati,  illustrious  and  worthy  of  entire 
confidence,  undertook  to  cross  the  sea  of  your  fame  with 
the  prosperous  wind  of  your  conduct.  One  pointed  out 
how  you  are  blessed  of  God  with  the  gift  of  charity,  be- 
cause you  give  what  you  have  to  the  enjoyment  of  all  the 
good,  and  receive  men  of  talent  in  the  arms  of  the  riches 
God  and  your  own  gains  have  given  you.  The  second 
affirmed  and  swore  to  it,  that  he  had  been  in  a  gondola 
with  you,  and  that  the  poor  ran  to  the  front  of  the  houses 
while  you,  like  a  banker  of  mercy,  gave  money  to  all  say- 
ing, 'God  has  given  it  to  me  and  for  love  of  Him  I  want 
always  to  distribute  it.'  A  third  confessed  to  having 
experienced  from  you  an  act  of  divine  goodness.  He  said 
he  had  offended  you.  Fortune  gave  him  into  your  hands 
and  you  could  have  returned  the  offense  with  heavy  inter- 
est and  you,  like  a  Christian,  embraced  and  forgave  him 
saying, — 'I  am  sorry  the  offense  was  not  greater  that  I 
might  forgive  you  even  more  willingly.'  The  fourth 
said  that  your  house  supports  secretly  twenty-five  poor 
people  and  you  do  not  know  it.  Think  then  how  good  a 
master  you  are,  since  those  who  serve  you  give  away  with- 
out any  permission  as  those  who  think  it  a  duty  to  follow 
your  steps;  and  do  it  without  saying  anything  about  it. 
The  last  prophesied  that  you  would  have  money  and  titles 
of  service  and  honour  from  all  the  princes  of  the  world. 


120  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

The  reason  is  this,  that  the  good  God  wills  to  have  it  so, 
in  order  that,  since  they  want  to  give  genius  and  poverty 
misery  for  daily  bread,  you  may  atone  for  their  defects, 
and  be  able  to  supply  by  your  prodigality  enough  to  satisfy 
everyone  who  asks.  And  I  say  that  the  goodness  of  God 
has  given  you  one  hand  to  write  and  subdue  princes  and 
the  other  to  receive  gifts,  in  order  that  with  both  you  may 
give.  And  you  who  recognize  that  divine  gift,  give  and 
will  give  to  whoever  asks,  and  even  to  him  who  does  not 
ask,  if  you  only  know  of  anyone  in  need. 

"Your  Doni,  without  other  phrases,  friend  and  servitor 
from  the  heart."  1 

Of  this  saintly,  God-gifted  person,  Doni  promised  in 
1552  to  write  the  life.  He  kept  his  promise  in  1556. 
But  meantime  he  and  Aretino  had  quarrelled,  and  the  life 
which  appeared  was  entitled  "Earth-quake  of  Doni  the 
Florentine  with  the  ruin  of  a  great  colossal  beastly  anti- 
Christ  of  our  age — work  written  to  the  honour  of  God 
and  the  defense  of  Holy  Church  as  well  as  of  good 
Christians."  It  was  addressed  to  "The  vituperative  and 
scoundrelly  Pietro  Aretino,  source  and  origin  of  every- 
thing bad,  stinking  limb  of  diabolical  falsity  and  true 
anti-Christ  of  our  century."  z  The  work  surpasses  the 
promise  of  the  title  and  the  address.  As  we  have  already 
seen,  filth  seemed  to  drop  into  the  ink  of  writers  of  the 
day,  and  least  of  all  in  controversy  were  their  pens  clean. 

Several  others  of  less  note  attacked  him.  But  a  certain 
pride  in  crossing  swords  with  the  dreaded  Scourge  of 

1  Letter*  al  Aretino,  I,  part  2,  page  347.     Compare  II,  part  2,  page  352. 
•II  Terre  moto   di   M.   Anton   Francesco  Doni   Contro   M.   Pietro   Aretino. 
Secondo  la  copia  dell'  anno,  1566. 

Lucca,   1861.     Per   Bartolomeo   Canovetti. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  121 

Princes,  can  be  seen  between  their  bitter  words.  Aretino 
had  several  of  the  fashionable  stock  literary  quarrels, 
which  the  combatants  sometimes  ended  by  reciprocal  com- 
plimentary letters ;  much  as  two  attorneys  after  belabour- 
ing each  other  in  court  will  lock  arms  and  go  off  to  lunch- 
eon together.  We  may  think  what  we  choose  of  Aretino ; 
in  his  own  lifetime  the  men  who,  over  their  own  signature, 
expressed  the  very  highest  opinion  of  him,  were,  in  dignity 
and  numbers,  fifty  to  one  compared  to  the  men  who  spoke 
evil  of  him.  The  dilemma  is  clear;  either  the  literary 
world  was  terrified  by  a  man  of  his  stamp  who  openly 
made  a  rich  living  by  blackmail,  or  else  they  admired  him. 
Of  all  his  assailants  only  one  can  be  put  in  the  same  class 
with  dozens  of  his  admirers, — that  was  Francesco  Berni. 
Berni's  hostility  was  so  well  known  that  the  most  rabid  of 
all  the  attacks  on  the  Scourge  of  Princes,  was  printed  un- 
der his  name.  Scholars  are  now  agreed  that  he  did  not 
write  it.  A  closing  note  to  Pietro  says — "you  are  dying 
of  hunger,"  and  ends,  "whatever  you  do  you  will  always 
be  an  ass,  a  pig  and  a  blockhead."  Three  of  these  four 
statements  are  manifestly  false.  And  the  same  propor- 
tion would  probably  hold  true  of  the  alleged  facts  in  the 
rest  of  the  work. 

On  the  whole,  Pietro  did  not  take  much  trouble  to 
answer  what  his  enemies  said  about  him.  He  affected 
towards  them  a  lofty  contempt  which  was  perhaps  more 
clever  than  sincere.  When  Captain  Gian  Battista,  mar- 
shal of  the  camp  of  the  Company  of  Pietro  Strozzi,  killed 
a  Signer  da  Monte  Albaddo,  who  spoke  ill  of  Aretino, 
Pietro  thanked  him  but  expressed  his  regret ;  because  "we 
are  Christians"  and  because  the  "license  of  free  speech  is 


122  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

not  to  be  punished  by  the  cruelty  of  fatal  violence."  * 
But  in  another  letter  he  suggests  that  bloodshed  was 
superfluous  in  any  case  of  the  sort  because  "it  is  wonderful 
that  such  enemies  don't  hang  themselves  for  envy  at  the 
success  of  my  writings  and  the  shame  of  theirs."  2  He 
bids  Dottore  Cavallino,  who  was  troubled  at  some  as- 
saults on  him,  not  to  be  disquieted:  "His  enemies  will 
find  his  name  a  diamond  which  breaks  the  teeth  of  those 
who  try  to  bite  it."  8  One  of  his  medals  shows  on  the 
reverse  a  nude  figure  over  whose  head  a  winged  Victory 
holds  a  laurel  crown.  The  demon  of  envy  struggles 
under  its  foot  and  Jove  in  the  clouds  above  poises  the 
thunderbolt.  The  inscription  reads  "Veritas  parit 
odium." 

It  was  fair  enough  for  Aretino  to  use  such  an  inscrip- 
tion, for  the  subtlest  trait  of  his  art  in  wielding  an  evil 
tongue  was  that  he  rarely  lied.  Luzio,  who  has  tested 
the  statements  of  the  only  one  of  his  Giudizi  which  has 
survived,  says, — "The  Archives  of  the  Gonzaga  prove 
that  Aretino  rarely  calumniates  and  invents.  Ninety-nine 
times  out  of  a  hundred  he  does  nothing  but  propagate  ac- 
cepted scandals,  put  in  circulation  malignant  asser- 
tions of  others,  giving  them  a  sharp  and  striking  form."  * 
When  one  of  the  characters  in  Aretino's  Cortigiana  asks : 
"How  can  I  best  say  evil  of  men?"  He  receives  the 
answer, — "By  telling  the  truth — by  telling  the  truth." 
For  Aretino  discovered  very  early  that  in  his  business  of 
literary  blackmail  truthfulness  was  the  best  policy.  This 

» Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  65. 
'Aretino,  L,ettere,  III,  66. 
•Aretino,  I,ettere,  III,  100. 
•  Un  Prognostico  Satirico  di  Pietro  Aretino.  Torino,  1888,  page  XXXI. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  123 

crafty  truthfulness  gave  him  a  great  superiority  over  his 
adversaries.  And  he  further  disarmed  them  by  proclaim- 
ing as  virtues  those  things  in  his  life  they  denounced  as 
infamous.  It  was  useless  for  Franco  to  call  him  "an 
angry  cur  to  whom  men  fling  bones  in  order  not  to  be 
bitten."  Aretino  had  already  in  letters  and  medals  proudly 
announced  himself  the  Scourge  of  Princes,  drawing  trib- 
ute from  their  fears  by  denouncing  their  vices.  And  the 
boasts  had  not  checked  the  intimacy  of  great  artists,  drop- 
ping into  his  house  as  if  they  belonged  to  the  family,  nor 
prevented  his  aristocratic  neighbours  from  sending  fruit 
and  flowers  from  their  gardens,  nor  stopped  the  rain  of 
gold  chains  that  fell  upon  his  neck  from  all  quarters  of 
the  world.1 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Aretino's  manipulation  of 
vanity  was  invariably  successful.  In  Michael  Angelo,  for 
instance,  he  found  a  difficult  subject.  For  many  years 
Pietro  was  accustomed  to  use  phrases  of  the  utmost  flat- 
tery, devotion  and  admiration  in  writing  to  Michael 
Angelo  and  also  in  writing  about  him.  According  to 
his  usual  custom  he  expected  something  in  return.  In 
1538  Michael  Angelo  had  acknowledged  one  of  his  letters 
in  the  most  complimentary  terms.2 

But  Pietro  expected  something  more  than  compliments, 
and  he  kept  writing  with  growing  insistence  to  Michael 
Angelo  and  to  common  friends  for  some  drawings  from 
the  master's  hand  to  be  added  to  his  art  collection.  When 
the  drawings  did  not  come,  Pietro  became  annoyed.  In 
1544  he  asks  Michael  Angelo,  in  a  most  flattering  letter, 

1  Aretino,  Lettere  passim. 

*  See  the  letter  quoted  on  page  76. 


124  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

— "Why  don't  you  reward  my  constant  devotion  in  rever- 
encing your  heaven-given  qualities,  with  a  remnant  of 
those  sketches  which  you  care  least  for?"  *  A  little  later 
he  tells  a  friend  to  ask  Michael  Angelo  "how  long  he 
thinks  that  I  can  suffer  the  continual  torment  of  waiting 
for  the  sketches  promised  me  ?" z  The  next  year,  he 
says,— "In  case  there  is  any  longer  delay  I  shall  be  forced 
to  give  up  the  faith  I  have  placed  in  so  great  a  man."  8 
A  month  later  he  asks  the  same  common  friend,  in  a  brief 
letter  without  any  of  the  admiring  adjectives  he  has  been 
wont  to  apply  to  Michael  Angelo's  name, — "In  short,  tell 
me  frankly  whether  I  ought  to  put  confidence  in  Buonar- 
roti or  not?"  "If  you  say  no,  I  shall  understand  that 
you  wish  me  to  turn  my  affection  for  him  into  disdain."  * 
This  veiled  threat  proved  ineffective  and  Pietro  showed 
how  dangerous  he  was  in  the  character  of  indignant 
friend;  and  what  Michael  Angelo  might  expect  if  he  did 
not  send  the  sketches.  Four  months  later  he  wrote  a 
letter  intended  for  circulation,  in  which  he  attacked  the 
painter  for  showing  the  world  in  his  Last  Judgment, — 
"no  less  impiety  in  religion  than  perfection  in  painting. 
He  has  placed  in  the  greatest  chapel  in  the  world,  above 
the  first  altar  of  Jesus,  before  the  eyes  of  the  Vicar  of 
Christ,  figures  of  angels  and  saints  entirely  nude."  He 
speaks  of  this  action  with  grief,  shame  and  indignation 
as  sacrilege  and  suggests  that  it  is  the  Christian  duty  of 
the  Pope  to  destroy  the  picture.  He  adds  that  he  does 
not  feel  astonished  that  Michael  Angelo  has  not  kept  his 

1Aretino,   Lettere,   III,  45. 
•Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  52. 
•  Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  122. 
'Aretino,  Lettere,  III,  131. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  125 

promises.  For  even  the  treasures  left  by  Julius  for  a  tomb, 
could  not  make  him  keep  his  promise  to  finish  it.  "A 
failure  to  do  your  duty  which  is  looked  on  as  your  theft." 

In  this  letter  according  to  his  usual  method,  Aretino 
used  truth  as  his  most  reliable  weapon.  The  nudities  in 
the  Last  Judgment  did  shock  the  religious  sensibilities  of 
the  day.  As  we  have  already  seen,  Aretino  had  a  good 
deal  of  religious  sensibility  and  he  also  may  have  felt  the 
shock.  For  some  members  of  Italian  society  bore  the 
spectacle  of  a  Pope  and  his  Cardinals  chuckling  over  the 
obscene  allusions  of  the  Suppositi  and  the  Calandra,  with 
more  complacency  than  the  idea  of  the  unclothed  figures 
of  Michael  Angelo's  fresco  in  the  Sistine  Chapel.  But 
the  motive  which  made  Aretino  express  this  feeling  in  his 
mordant  letter,  is  unmistakably  plain  in  the  postscript. 
"Now  that  I  have  a  little  blown  off  my  anger  against  the 
cruelty  you  show  towards  my  devotion,  and  have,  I  think, 
shown  you  that  if  you  are  divine  (di-vina)  I  am  not  of 
water  (d'acqua),  tear  up  this  letter  which  I  have  also 
torn  up  and  make  up  your  mind  that  I  am  the  sort  of  man 
whose  letters  even  emperors  and  kings  answer." 

Perhaps  Pietro  did  tear  up  his  copy  of  this  letter,  but 
he  repeated  the  most  damaging  part  of  it  without  the  post- 
script and  with  extraordinary  similarity  of  phrase,  in  a 
letter  written  the  next  year,  and  then  printed  it.  The 
reader  will  probably  be  glad  to  be  told  that,  so  far  as  we 
know,  Michael  Angelo  never  sent  any  sketches. 

In  another  direction  also,  Aretino's  system  of  literary 
blackmail  failed  to  work  to  his  satisfaction.  All  through 
his  writings  runs  a  series  of  damaging  and  denunciatory 
allusions  to  the  Papal  court,  the  clergy  and  monks.  These 


126  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

allusions  are  vague  and  general,  and  not  at  all  incompatible 
with  his  equally  continuous  professions  of  loyalty  to  the 
orthodox  faith  and  the  ancient  church.     They  do  not 
prevent  the  exchange  of  highly  complimentary  letters 
with  a  large  number  of  prelates  and  monks  nor  the  receipt 
of  favours  from  popes.     His  attacks  are  generally  by 
way  of  slurs,  as  when  he  writes  to  the  Cardinal  of  Trent 
that  "he  is  as  truthful  as  every  other  man  of  his  habit  is 
full  of  lies,"  1  or  says  that  a  certain  thing  "would  be 
shameful  even  among  cardinals  let  alone  among  cava- 
liers," z  or  tells  Cardinal  Hippolito  de'  Medici  "that  as 
others  show  the  honours,  incomes  and  favours  gained  in 
the  Roman  court  by  their  vices,  he  will  show  the  offenses 
he  has  received  for  his  virtues."  3    Sometimes  he  repeated 
a  story  like  that  of  Julius  II  rushing  out  of  his  room 
in  fury  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  pursue  a  careless 
singer  in  the  corridors  of  the  palace,  not  heeding  one  of 
his  attendants,  who  kept  calling  "Holy  Father,  go  to 
bed,"  and  finally  giving  a  terrible  rap  over  the  head  to  his 
luckless  steward  who  came  to  see  what  the  row  was  and 
was  taken  for  the  rash  musician. 

But  on  occasions  he  made  more  direct  and  deadly  as- 
saults. Just  after  the  sack  of  Rome,  he  wrote  a  satiric 
address  to  the  Roman  clergy,  called  the  "Pax  Vobiscum." 
The  scorching  sentences  struck  Pope  Clement  in  the  midst 
of  his  ruined  city  so  cruelly  that  he  let  the  book  fall  from 
his  hands  and  burst  into  tears.4  In  the  presence  of 
Aretino's  friend,  the  painter  Sebastiano  del  Piombo,  he 

1  Aretino,  Lettere,  I,  69. 
•Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  192. 
•Aretino,  I,ettere,  I,  80. 
*  Lettere  al  Aretino,  I,  page  309. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  127 

said  with  a  sigh,  when  in  the  castle  of  Saint  Angelo, — "If 
Pietro  had  been  with  me  I  should  not  be  here  worse  than 
a  prisoner/'  and  went  on  to  explain  that  the  representa- 
tives of  the  Emperor  would  not  dare  to  treat  him  so 
shamefully  if  the  dreaded  pen  of  Pietro  were  on  his  side.1 
In  this  attack  as  in  others,  Pietro  was  cleverly  using 
for  ignoble  ends  what  was  generally  thought  to  be  the 
truth.     It  was  the  universal  opinion,  expressed  by  many 
whose  fidelity  to  the  Church  could  not  be  questioned,  that 
the  sack  of  Rome  was  the  divine  judgment  on  the  sins  of 
the  Curia.   But  the  impelling  motive  of  Pietro's  criticism 
of  the  Church  was  not  prophetic  wrath,  nor  were  his  tem- 
porary reconciliations  with  the  popes  entirely  the  result 
of  that  readiness  to  forgive  injuries  of  which  he  often 
boasts,  and  not  without  truth.    In  the  case  of  the  corrup- 
tions of  the  Church,  as  in  the  case  of  the  corruptions  of 
princely  courts,  he  was  using,  sometimes  without  being 
conscious  of  it  at  the  moment,  a  not  altogether  ungen- 
uine  indignation  to  gratify  revenge  and  greed.    And  the 
man  to  whom  that  seems  impossible  does  not  know  the 
curious  anomalies  of  character  that  flourished  in  the  air 
of  the  Italian  Renascence. 

The  justice  of  this  judgment  on  the  chief  motive  of 
his  slurs  on  the  clergy,  and  his  willingness  to  exchange 
invective  for  eulogy  if  he  was  paid  for  it,  are  made 
perfectly  plain  by  his  own  pen.  Soon  after  Paul  III  be- 
came Pope,  Aretino  wrote  to  a  newly-made  Cardinal — 
"Miserable  men  of  genius  everywhere  fallen  into  need, 
hope  to  rise  again  and  with  the  piety  of  your  aid  to  ob- 

1  Lettere,  al  Aretino,  I,  page  12. 


128  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

tain  from  the  best  of  popes  their  daily  bread.  And  when 
they  have  obtained  it,  you  will  be  the  cause  of  making 
their  spirits  give  breath  to  the  trumpet  of  Holy  Scrip- 
ture, instead  of  sounding  the  horns  of  the  defects  of  others 
with  the  voice  of  desperation.  What  miracles  will  issue 
from  that  genius  and  intellect  when  they  are  given  not 
bishoprics  *  *  *  but  a  proper  income  and  a  de- 
cent competence  by  means  of  which  they  can  study,  and 
honour  God  with  the  results  of  study.  *  *  *  Why 
not  aid  them  ?  Why  not  use  them  ?  If  one  of  them  has 
a  biting  tongue  extract  it  with  'cortesia.'  Close  his  mouth 
with  a  gift.  See  how  the  great  Caesar  *  *  *  has 
done  this  in  honour  of  my  free  virtue  giving  me  reason 
to  talk  and  write  good.  See  further  how  Our  Redeemer 
entered  into  the  heart  of  Saul  with  His  grace  in  order 
that  he  might  become  a  bell  sounding  His  name,  as  I 
would  become  a  bell  to  sound  the  virtues  of  the  ministers 
of  His  temple,  if  the  imperial  'cortesia'  were  imitated."1 
He  made  this  offer  more  plain  in  the  Giudizio  for  1534, 
the  only  one  which  has  survived.  He  asks  the  King  of 
France  to  induce  the  Pope  to  reward  his  servitu.  And  the 
"necessities  of  Aretino  being  met,  the  name  and  works 
of  priests  will  not  be  lacerated.  Whence,  sire,  you  will 
acquire  no  less  glory  by  freeing  from  true  and  eternal 
disgrace  the  clergy,  now  become  the  fable  of  the  vulgar 
because  of  my  most  just  anger,  than  your  predecessors 
have  acquired  by  having  freed  them  from  the  hands  of 
their  enemies.  And  obtaining  such  favour  I  will  not  only 
keep  silent  about  every  signore  and  monsignore,  but  I 

*  Aretino,  Letterc,  I,  75, 


PIETRO  ARETINO  129 

will  turn  my  natural  style  to  speaking  well,"  etc.,  etc.1 
Six  years  later,  he  struck  another  note  on  the  same 
string  he  so  often  sounded.  He  writes  to  the  Apostolic 
Legate  with  a  copy  of  his  "Life  of  the  Virgin  Mary." 
"*  *  *  Happy  the  ink,  happy  the  pen,  happy  the  pa- 
per which  are  used,  which  are  spread  for  the  praise  of 
Mary.  Now  most  reverend  Monsignore,  reputation  of  the 
honour  of  the  clergy,  how  long  ought  I  to  wait  that  Rome 
should  consider,  not  the  many  years  which  she  robs  from 
my  servitu,  but  the  many  books  I  have  composed  to  the 
honour  of  God  ?  Think  of  the  Psalms  of  David,  The  Gen- 
esis of  Moses,  the  Humanity  of  Jesus.  See  how  the  Life 
of  His  Mother  is  overlooked  by  the  church  because  I  am 
not  set  down  as  approved  in  the  catalogue  of  hypocrisy. 
But  where  are  the  writings  about  Christ  made  by  those 
who  receive  so  many  honours,  so  many  properties,  so 
many  solid  returns  from  the  Church  ?  But  if  I,  driven  to 
despair  by  the  cruelty  of  the  court,  do  not  fail  to  show  my- 
self to  be  a  Christian,  what  do  you  suppose  I  would  do  if 
she  should  show  herself  grateful  ?"  2 

When  the  imperial  pension  had  been  granted,  no  one 
had  any  further  fear  that  Aretino  would  publish  the 
whispered  scandals  about  the  life  of  Charles  V,  and  ut- 
terances of  which  these  are  specimens,  seem  to  show  that 
the  red  hat,  or  some  reward  less  onerous  to  a  man  of  his 
temper  and  habit,  would  have  kept  the  most  "dangerous 
tongue"  in  Italy  from  repeating  what  he  heard  about  the 
Court  of  Rome.  Across  the  Alps,  there  was  a  contem- 
porary of  the  dreaded  Venetian  whose  mastery  of  words 

1  Un  Pronostico  Satirico  di  Pietro  Aretino,  page  34. 
» Aretino,  Lettere,  II,  168. 


130  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

was  greater,  and  whose  power  of  denunciation  was  even 
more  terrible.  Aretino  always  spoke  of  him, — and,  unless 
this  essay  has  failed,  the  reader  must  see  he  spoke  without 
hypocrisy — as  an  enemy  of  the  church,  of  society  and  of 
God's  truth.  It  would  be  far  easier  to  sustain  an  indict- 
ment for  libel  against  details  of  Luther's  utterances  about 
the  Roman  Curia,  than  against  those  of  Aretino,  but  of 
the  lofty  passion  which  made  the  German  monk  refuse 
to  sell  his  copyrights  for  a  large  sum  Aretino  could  not 
have  the  smallest  understanding. 

It  was  during  the  bitterest  part  of  his  attacks  on  the 
papal  court,  that  this  bravo  of  the  pen  received  his  hardest 
and  most  damaging  blow.  It  came  from  the  same  house- 
hold that  furnished  the  assassin's  dagger  that  drove 
him  from  Rome.  The  Datario  Ghiberti,  afterwards 
bishop  of  Verona,  had  as  secretary  Francesco  Berni,  who 
wrote  burlesque  poetry  with  such  success  that  he  has  given 
his  name  to  the  Bernesque  style  which  Byron  used  in 
Beppo  and  Don  Juan.  Soon  after  the  publication  of  the 
"Pax  Vobiscum,"  Berni  wrote  a  famous  sonnet  in  an- 
swer. It  contained  at  least  one  malicious  libel,  the  story 
about  Aretino's  sister,  and  enables  the  reader  to  judge 
of  the  malodorous  flowers  that  bloomed  in  the  contro- 
versial pages  of  Aretino  and  many  of  his  contemporaries. 
A  simple  prose  translation  is  the  needed  relief  from  the 
impossible  task  of  reproducing  its  rollicking  measure  and 
easy  rhyme : — 

"Will  you  go  on  saying  and  making  lie  after  lie,  O, 
rotten,  putrid  and  unsalted  tongue,  until  a  dagger  shall 
be  found  better  and  luckier  than  that  of  Achilles?" 

"The  Pope  is  pope  and  you  are  a  rascal  who  lives  by 


PIETRO  ARETINO  131 

the  bread  of  others  and  evil  speaking.  You  have  one  foot 
in  the  brothel  and  the  other  in  the  hospital.  You  miser- 
able maimed  thing — ignorant  and  arrogant.  Giovomatteo 
(The  Datario)  and  those  he  has  at  hand,  who  by  the 
grace  of  God  are  safe  and  sound,  will  drown  you  some 
fine  day  in  a  privy  vault.  May  the  hangman  punish  thy 
panderous  manners.  And  if  you  want  to  go  on  chatter- 
ing, look  out  for  yourself !  Take  care  of  your  breast,  your 
head  and  your  hands.  (Achilles  had  wounded  him  in 
these  three  places. )  But  do  you  behave  like  the  dogs  who, 
after  they  have  shaken  off  a  good  beating,  are  better  than 
ever.  Have  the  grace  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself,  pre- 
sumptuous pig,  infamous  monster,  image  of  vituperation 
and  starvation.  A  dung-heap  waits  for  you,  O  rogue, 
where  you  can  die  beside  the  two,  your  sisters,  who  do  you 
so  much  honour  in  the  brothel  at  Arezzo,  dancing  to 
the  tune  'What  does  my  love?'  *  *  *  Traitor,  you 
ought  to  write  your  ballads  and  stories  about  these  and 
not  of  Sanga,1  who  has  no  sisters.  These  are  they  who 
by  their  evil  life  shall  pay  your  expenses  and  their  own, 
and  not  the  Marquis  of  Mantua,  because  now  you  are  a 
stench  in  the  nostrils  to  every  country,  every  man,  every 
animal.  Heaven,  God  and  the  devil  wish  you  ill.  Those 
ducal  garments,  the  fruit  of  begging  and  cheating  which, 
fallen  into  misfortune,  like  morning  weeds  weep  for  you 
and  your  back  to  the  sound  of  the  drubbings  you  get, 
will  be  stripped  off  you  before  you  die,  by  the  Reverend 
Father,  Mr.  Hangman,  who  will  take  you  out  of  the 
world  by  a  halter  and  for  a  further  favour,  quarter  you ; 

1  A  Roman  attacked  by  Aretino.     See  Virgili's  Life  of  Berni,  note  to  page 
248. 


I32  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

and  your  parasites,  panders  of  your  vices,  tavern  loungers 
will  sing  for  you  the  eternal  requiem.  Now  live  and  be- 
have yourself,  or  a  dagger,  a  cesspool  or  else  a  noose  will 
shut  you  up  somehow."  1 

It  is  a  typical  instance  of  the  way  in  which  Aretino 
has  been  made  the  scapegoat  of  his  time,  that  Berrii's  bi- 
ographer, Virgili,  who  cannot  be  stern  enough  about  the 
coarseness  and  irresponsibility  of  Aretino,  should  speak 
of  this  sonnet  as  a  "frank  and  loyal"  attack  on  that  unique 
monster  of  wickedness.2  Its  tone  and  method  are  the 
more  illuminative  of  the  manners  of  the  age  because 
Berni  was  apparently  not  a  man  ready  for  any  dirty 
work  a  patron  might  ask  of  him.  Those  who  had  reason 
to  know  asserted,  that  after  he  became  a  canon  of  the 
church,  he  was  suddenly  taken  ill  while  dining  one  day 
with  his  friend  and  patron.  Cardinal  Cybo,  and  died  in 
a  week,  poisoned  by  the  orders  of  his  host.  The  cause 
of  the  alleged  crime  was  that  Berni  had  sharply  refused 
Cybo's  command  to  poison  Cardinal  Salviati.3 

There  was  only  one  Pope  from  whom  Aretino  received 
anything  like  what  he  thought  his  due.  After  having 
vainly  written  such  letters  to  the  court  of  Paul  III,  as 
we  have  quoted,  Aretino  turned  again  to  attack,  and  even 
ended  one  poem  by  invoking  the  Turk  to  come  and  re- 
form with  cannon  balls  the  horrible  corruptions  of  Rome.4 
At  the  death  of  Paul  III,  Julius  III  became  Pope.  He 

1  Berni,  Rime,  edited  by  Virgili,  page  62. 

*  Virgili,  Life  of  Berni,  page  543. 

•  Virgili,    Life    of    Berni,    and    Staffeti,    "II    Cardinale    Innocenzo    Cybo." 
Firenze,  1894. 

•Quoted  from  MSS.  by  Luzio,  Giornale  Storico  della  Lctteratura  Italiana, 
XIX,  page  108. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  133 

was  from  Arezzo  and  the  brother  of  one  of  Aretino's 
friends.  Aretino  saluted  him  at  once  with  complimentary 
writings.  Julius  made  him  a  cavalier  of  St.  Peter  and 
invited  him  to  Rome,  saying  he  would  make  a  second  ju- 
bilee because  every  one  would  flock  to  Rome  to 
see  him.1 

Aretino  felt  this  was  what  he  deserved,  but  he 
claimed  something  more.  And  two  years  later  we  find  him 
pointing  out  to  a  friend  in  Rome  from  whose  intercession 
he  had  failed  to  obtain  more  solid  benefits,  that  his 
"tongue  is  pestiferous  to  those  it  does  not  admire,  for 
example,  Leo  and  Clement,  whose  diabolical  holinesses  in- 
stead of  wiping  off  the  sweat  of  my  servitu  with  the  ready 
hands  of  reward,  dipped  them  in  my  blood  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  I  am  without  guile — that  truth  is  my 
idol,  that  etc.,  etc."  He  goes  on  to  brag  of  his  services 
to  the  church,  his  widespread  fame,  the  rewards  given 
by  all  princes,  and  to  ask  why  the  clergy,  for  their  own 
honour  and  the  safety  of  the  church,  do  not  also  "gild 
his  pen?"2 

In  1553  the  Duke  of  Urbino,  made  Captain  Gen- 
eral of  the  Church,  took  Aretino  to  Rome  with  him. 
The  Pope  in  audience  rose  from  his  seat  to  greet  Aretino 
with  a  kiss  of  "fraternal  tenderness"  and  assigned  him 
magnificent  apartments  in  the  palace.  He  sent  back  to 
Venice  laudatory  descriptions  of  what  he  had  seen  and 
complimentary  letters  about  the  Pope.  Julius'  brother, 
who  had  been  enormously  advanced  in  wealth  and  power, 
had  promised  Aretino  a  pension  of  ten  scudi  a  month. 

1  Aretino,  Lettere.  VI,  160. 
•Aretino,  Lettere,  VI,  113. 


134  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

But  for  some  reason  or  other,  perhaps  because  Aretino 
could  not  keep  from  evil  speaking,  this  was  suspended. 
Aretino  burst  out  in  savage  utterances  against  the  Roman 
court,  but  thought  better  of  it  and  wrote  most  abject 
letters,  begging  to  be  forgiven  and  have  his  pension  again. 
He  had  only  bitten  like  "a  family  dog  whose  bone  has 
been  snatched  away;"  "for  men  of  virtu  ought  to  be 
compared  to  lean  mastiffs  who  lick  the  feet  of  him  who 
gives  them  food  and  tear  the  legs  of  those  who  refuse 
it  to  them."  *  When  all  his  prayers  could  not  obtain  par- 
don, he  wrote  a  sarcastic  letter  of  thanks  to  Baldovino, 
thanking  him  "for  relief  from  the  disgrace  of  accept- 
ing so  vile  a  guerdon."  2  And  far  from  being  ashamed 
of  letters  through  which  we  know  of  this  last  vendetta 
with  Rome,  the  writer  published  them  himself. 

They  are  among  the  last  we  have  from  him.  On  the 
2  ist  of  October,  1556,  he  died  of  a  stroke  of  apoplexy, 
in  the  sixty-fifth  year  of  his  age.  Slander  became  busy 
soon  after  his  death  in  forming  the  legend  that  he  died  an 
atheist.  His  native  city  of  Arezzo,  which  made  him  a 
patrician,  gave  him  the  title  "Salvator  Patriae,"  hung  his 
portrait  in  the  council  chamber,  still  preserves  his  house, 
and  made,  in  1581,  inquiries  about  his  death.  The  sworn 
attestation  of  Aretino's  pastor  found  some  twenty-five 
years  ago  in  the  archives  of  Arezzo,  has  disposed  of 
the  legend  that  he  died  an  atheist.  The  priest  sends  a 
deposition,  sworn  before  a  notary,  that,  shortly  before  his 
sudden  death,  Aretino  confessed  to  him  and  took  com- 
munion with  tears  that  showed  great  feeling. 

*  Aretino,  Lettere,  VI,  215. 
•Aretino,  Lettere,  VI,  261. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  135 

When  death  had  removed  him  from  attack,  war  was 
made  on  his  works.  Ten  years  before  ^i>  dfr^K  an  ^- 
tempt  had  been  made  to  persuade  the  Pope  to  have  his 

i^     — •* 

religious  wuiks  Emrnt.  The_ 
of  fits'  writings,  twn  years  after.  allr  were  placedjhyjjie 
Church  on  the  index  of  prohibited  books.  The  need  of 
stopping  their  circulation  if  they  were  heretical,  is  sug- 
gested by  one  account  of  the  officers  of  the  Inquisition. 
They  seized  the  stock  of  Cappello,  a  bookseller  of  Naples, 
who  was  agent  for  Gabriel  Giolito,  a  publisher  and  book- 
seller of  Venice  with  shops  in  Bologna,  Ferrara  and 
Naples.  In  the  stock  of  seven  hundred  and  twenty-nine 
books,  one  hundred  and  twenty-six  were  by  Aretino ;  the 
next  best  selling  author,  if  we  can  test  by  this  standard, 
was  Erasmus,  of  whose  works  seventy-one  copies  were 
found.  There  were  in  stock  thirty-nine  copies  of  Are- 
tino's  dramatic  works,  thirty  copies  of  his  letters  and 
forty  copies  of  his  religious  books.  Of  his  pornographic 
writings  only  nine  copies  were  found. 

It  has  been  assumed  that  Aretino's  works  were  put  upon 
the  index,  because  of  his  pornographic  writings.  This 
assumption  seems  to  be  mistaken;  the  very  slight  refer- 
ences which  have  survived  to  suggest  the  motives  for 
that  condemnation  refer  to  heretical  tendencies.  There 
are  things  in  his  religious  writings  on  which  a  charge  of 
departure  from  orthodoxy  could  have  been  based.  And 
when  the  influence  of  the  Council  of  Trent  was  being 
felt  in  reforming  the  abuses  and  restoring  the  discipline 
of  the  church,  Aretino's  freedom  in  criticising  the  clergy 
became  offensive. 

1  Aretino,   I,ettere,   III,   105. 


136  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

That  this  was  the  motive  for  putting  Aretino  on  the 
index  is  strongly  suggested  by  the  way  in  which  the 
redactors  treated  other  lascivious  writers.  The  Coun- 
cil of  Trent  ordered  that  books  should  be  placed 
on  the  index  which  "intentionally  narrate  or  discuss  las- 
civious and  obscene  things,"  because  it  was  necessary  to 
defend  "morals  as  well  as  faith."  But  the  "Redactors  of 
the  Index,  the  official  correctors  of  profane  literature,  al- 
most all  forget  the  interests  of  morality,  and  think  only  of 
reestablishing  the  honour  of  the  ecclesiastical  body."  The 
works  of  Straparola,  Bandello  and  Firenzuola,  extremely 
licentious  and  coarse,  escaped  condemnation.  The  ex- 
purgated edition  of  Bandello,  published  in  1560,  lacks 
little  of  the  obscenity  of  the  original,  but  the  stories  which 
centered  on  scandals  of  clergymen  are  omitted.  In  1573 
the  Pope  ordered  an  edition  of  the  "Decameron,"  which 
Catholics  might  read  without  disobeying  the  index.  This 
edition,  authorized  by  the  inquisition,  left  lascivious 
passages  unchanged,  but  lacks  words  like  "devil"  and 
"hell"  and  all  obscene  phrases  which  contained  the  names 
of  saints.  And  whenever  a  clergyman  was  the  hero  of 
a  scandalous  adventure,  the  expurgator  left  the  adven- 
ture unchanged,  but  made  the  hero  a  layman,  and  the  ab- 
besses became  citizens'  wives.  In  addition  every  passage 
which  sounded  like  the  phrases  used  by  heretics,  such  as 
the  suggestion  that  "the  grace  of  God  comes  without 
merit,"  was  cut  out.1  In  a  similar  spirit  the  Spanish  In- 
quisition in  1619  erased  from  the  original  edition  of  Don 

1  The  foregoing  paragraph  is  in  part  quoted,  in  part  summarized,  from  the 
valuable  work  of  M.  Dejob.  De  1'influence  du  Concile  de  Trent  sur  Literature 
et  les  Beaux  Arts,  Paris,  1884. 


PIETRO  ARETINO  137 

Quixote  the  playful  remark  of  the  Duchess  when  advis- 
ing Sancho  to  scourge  himself  for  the  release' of  Dulcinea 
from  enchantment, — "Remember,  Sancho,  that  works  of 
charity  done  in  a  lukewarm  and  half-hearted  way,  are 
without  merit  and  of  no  avail."  * 

These  and  similar  comparfcnn0.  sug^fnt  thnt  Aretino 
was  condemned  nrt  for  ^fof^ity  hut  for  bprpQy, 

more  particularly  because  of  the  snpprs  an^ 

remarks  against  the  clergy,  which  were  scattered  so  freely 

through  his  works. 

lie  was  buried  in  trie  church  of  San  Luca,  but  his 
tomb  was  destroyed  when  the  level  of  the  floor  was 
changed.  His  epitaph  was  not  the  fabled  one  which  ac- 
cused him  of  never  having  known  God,  but  probably  the 
one  a  German  traveller  reports  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century : — 

"From  a  lowly  origin,  Pietro  Aretino  rose  to  such 
height  by  denouncing  impure  vice  that,  through  the  fear 
he  inspired,  he  levied  tribute  from  those  to  whom  the 
world  paid  tribute."  2 


Jj 

•*•• 


*  Don  Quixote,  etc.     A  translation,  etc.,  by  John  Ormsby.     London,   Smith, 
Elder,  1885.    Vol.  Ill,  page  S99,  note. 

*  Quoted  Carlo  Bertani,  Pietro  Aretino,  etc.     Sondrio,  1901.     (237.)     From 
Shrader  Monumenta  Italia;  Helmaestadii,  1592. 


Ill 

THOMAS  CROMWELL 

Two  men  have  risen  to  larger  power  in  England  than 
has  been  wielded  by  any  other  Englishman  not  connected 
by  birth  or  marriage  with  the  royal  line.  They  were  of 
the  same  blood,  for  Oliver  Cromwell  was  descended  in  the 
fifth  generation  from  the  sister  of  Thomas  Cromwell, 
who  under  Henry  VIII  wielded  the  highest  authority  in 
Church  and  State.1  They  were  very  unlike  in  character, 
but  had  common  traits:  unusual  capacity  for  the  affairs 
of  government,  tact  in  dealing  with  men,  an  iron  will  and 
the  gift  of  foresight. 

Fame  has  been  unfair  to  both  of  these  great  men.  In 
giving  judgment  upon  each  in  turn  she  has  stood  with 
eyes  bound,  not  to  weigh  more  evenly  good  against  evil, 
but  to  take  with  blind  confidence  the  opinion  of  his  bit- 
ter enemies  as  a  just  estimate  of  his  work  and  character. 

The  opponents  of  Oliver  Cromwell  hung  his  coffined 
body  on  the  gallows,  and  then  flung  his  bones  into  a 
shallow  grave  at  its  foot.  But  they  buried  his  memory 
under  obliquy  so  deep  that,  more  than  two  hundred  years 
afterward,  the  city  government  of  Leeds  dared  not  ac- 
cept the  gift  of  a  statue  to  him  because  they  feared  the 
people.  A  saner  judgment  has  at  last  prevailed.  It  was 

1  Milton  in  his  "Second  Defense  of  the  People  of  England,"  refers  to  this 
descent  of  Oliver  Cromwell  "from  illustrious  ancestors  distinguished  for  the 
part  they  took  in  restoring  and  establishing  true  religion  in  this  country." 

138 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  139 

voiced  five  years  ago  by  the  man  who  held  at  death  the 
almost  unquestioned  primacy  among  the  writers  of  his- 
tory in  the  English  tongue.  "It  is  time  for  us  to  regard 
him  as  he  really  was,  with  all  his  physical  and  moral  au- 
dacity, with  all  his  tenderness  and  spiritual  yearnings,  in 
the  world  of  action  what  Shakespeare  was  in  the  world 
of  thought,  the  greatest,  because  the  most  typical,  Eng- 
glishman  of  all  time."  1 

For  the  older  but  the  smaller  of  these  two  kinsmen  the 
ebb  and  flow  of  the  tide  of  injustice  has  been  reversed. 
Within  two  generations  of  Thomas  Cromwell's  death  on 
the  scaffold  at  the  hands  of  a  priestly  cabal,  Fletcher  or 
Shakespeare  put  the  popular  estimate  of  his  work  and 
character  into  the  prophetic  adjuration  of  the  dying  Wol- 
sey : 

"Cromwell,  I  charge  thee,  fling  away  ambition. 

....  Be  just  and  fear  not. 

Let  all  the  ends  thou  aim'st  at  be  thy  country's, 

Thy  God's  and  truth's ;  then  if  thou  fall'st,  O  Cromwell ! 

Thou  fall'st  a  blessed  martyr." 

But  modern  writers,  particularly  during  this  genera- 
tion, have  presented  him  as  the  importer  of  the  unknown 
vices  of  Italian  politics,  a  mere  tyrant's  hireling  and  flat- 
terer, the  light  of  whose  intellect  displays  no  large  aims, 
but,  as  by  infernal  fires,  only  illumines  the  cruelty  and 
greed  of  an  adventurer.  This  peculiarly  sinister  atmos- 
phere comes  chiefly  from  the  Apologia,  a  long  rhetorical 
letter  written  the  year  before  Cromwell's  execution  to 
the  Emperor  Charles  V,  urging  him  to  invade  England 

1  Samuel  R.  Gardiner,  Oxford  Lectures  on  Cromwell. 


140  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

and  force  it  from  schism  to  obedience.  Its  author  was 
Cardinal  Reginald  Pole,  an  Englishman  of  the  blood 
royal,  outlawed  for  treason,  who  had  tried  to  bring  Papal 
money  into  England  to  back  an  insurrection  which  men- 
aced the  throne  and  demanded  Cromwell's  head.  *  This 
attempt  Cromwell  answered  by  sending  to  the  block  the 
chief  of  the  Pole  family  and  their  intimate  friends.  It  is  as 
unreasonable  to  base  a  final  estimate  of  Cromwell  upon 
such  a  document,  as  it  would  be  to  base  a  final  estimate 
of  the  character  and  purposes  of  Abraham  Lincoln  on  a 
letter  of  Jefferson  Davis,  written  during  the  Civil  War  to 
gain  the  alliance  of  a  European  power  for  the  Confed- 
eracy.2 

An  historical  sketch  of  Cromwell  must  judge  him,  not 
by  the  ideals  of  his  opponents,  but  by  his  own;  test  him 
by  the  moral  average  of  his  times,  and  take  account  of 
the  qualities  his  friends  truly  praised,  as  well  as  the  vices 
his  enemies  justly  condemned.  This  attempt  is  based 
chiefly  on  the  seven  thousand  letters,  by,  to  or  about 
Cromwell,  calendared  in  the  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry 
VIII.  There  is  nothing  in  it  which  cannot  be  supported 
by  citations  from  that  collection  or  other  contemporary 
writings.  The  writer  believes  he  has  never  differed  from 
the  opinions  of  modern  historians  without  being  aware 
of  it,  and  every  such  difference  implies  a  dissent  which 
seems  to  him  justified  by  evidence  drawn  from  the  pri- 
mary sources. 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XII,  part  1,  123,  1141.  Pole  denied  this.  The  article 
in  the  appendix  shows  by  documents  that  he  did  not  tell  the  truth. 

•  In  addition  to  this  reflection,  sufficient  for  the  present  purpose,  the  writer 
has  found  the  Apologia,  after  critical  examination,  erroneous  in  detail.  The 
article  in  the  appendix  of  this  volume,  reprinted  from  the  American  Historical 
Review,  gives  the  grounds  for  this  conclusion. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  141 

Henry  VIII  had  that  eye  of  a  king  which  sees  ca- 
pacity while  yet  in  obscurity.  Under  his  favor  two  men, 
unaided  by  birth  or  money,  rose  to  high  positions  which 
became  the  background  to  display  remarkable  talents — 
Thomas  Wolsey  and  Thomas  Cromwell. 

Thomas  Cromwell,  born  toward  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  was  the  son  of  Walter  Cromwell,  who  was  de- 
scended from  two  generations  of  people  of  wealth  and 
importance  in  burgher  society.  He  owned  at  various 
times  a  blacksmith  shop,  a  fulling  mill  and  a  brewery, 
but  in  his  later  years  lost  most  of  his  property.1  The 
only  contemporary  accounts  of  Cromwell's  youth  contain 
several  demonstrable  mistakes,  and  have  therefore  been 
perhaps  unduly  discredited.  But  it  is  certain  that,  while 
still  a  lad,  he  traveled  abroad  and  led  a  rough  and  adven- 
turous life.  In  Italy  he  fell  into  great  poverty,  and  for 
a  time  served  as  a  soldier.  During  this  wandering  life 
he  gained  skill  in  business  affairs,  and  acted  as  clerk,  or 
bookkeeper,  in  the  two  great  commercial  cities  of  Ant- 
werp and  Venice.  At  some  time  in  his  early  life  he  ac- 
quired Latin,  French,  Italian  and  a  knowledge  of  law. 
According  to  a  story  told  by  a  man  who  would  be  apt  to 
know  the  facts,  he  developed,  while  still  young,  tact  in 
managing  men.  The  town  of  Boston  wished  to  obtain 
some  favor  from  the  Pope,  and  Cromwell  went  with  their 
agent  to  Rome.  The  request  was  reasonable,  but  Crom- 
well was  delayed  by  a  great  crowd  of  suitors.  In  this 
situation^  he  used  his  wits  instead  of  the  usual  presents 
to  attendants  to  get  an  audience  before  his  turn.  Wait- 

1  See  the  summary  of  evidence  in  Thomas  Cromwell,  by  Roger  B.  Merriman. 
Macmillan,  1903. 


142  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ing  for  the  Pope  as  he  came  home  from  hunting,  Crom- 
well's company,  when  the  cavalcade  drew  near,  sang  an 
English  "three-man  song."  The  novel  music  attracted 
Julius'  attention,  Cromwell  clinched  the  favorable  im- 
pression by  the  gift  of  some  English  jellies  or  sweetmeats, 
and  in  the  audience  he  got  obtained  the  favor  Boston 
sought. 

Between  the  ages  of  twenty-five  and  thirty,  he  came 
home,  settled  down  and  married  the  daughter  of  a  shear- 
man, an  old  neighbor,  who  had  perhaps  cooperated  with 
his  father's  fulling  mill  in  the  manufacture  of  cloth.  For 
a  time  he  carried  on  the  business  of  the  fulling  mill,  to 
which  he  added  the  profession  of  a  notary  and  business 
agent.  His  connections  with  the  Italian  and  Flemish 
merchants  living  in  London  evidently  helped  him,  and 
prosperity  followed  hard  work.  In  1524  he  seems  to 
have  given  up  the  fulling  mill  and  devoted  himself  to 
his  profession  as  a  lawyer.  He  gained  a  good  practice, 
and  increased  his  earnings  by  loaning  them  among  the 
merchants  and  gentry  whose  affairs  he  managed. 

About  ten  years  after  he  returned  to  England,  he  bought 
land  in  a  good  quarter  of  London.  He  had  already  be- 
come a  person  of  position  in  the  burgher  society  in  which 
he  moved.  In  1522  he  was  put  down  in  a  joint  power 
of  attorney  alongside  of  Poyser,  grocer,  London,  as 
Thomas  Cromwell,  London,  Gent.1  In  1523  he  sat  on 
the  inquest  of  wardmote  for  his  ward.  It  was  an  ener- 
getic committee.  It  presented  Hanchok  and  Bonyfaut  for 
a  defective  pavement  in  front  of  their  doors,  and  some 
twenty  other  owners  had  similar  complaints  lodged 

1  Lttters  and  Papers,  Dom.  Series,  III,  2447. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  143 

against  them.  There  was  a  "noisome  goose  house  in 
Scalding  Alley."  William  Delke  had  threatened  mem- 
bers of  the  inquest — probably  for  doing  their  duty.  The 
wives  of  Spencer,  Harrison  and  Badcoke  were  presented 
for  scolding,  and  the  wife  of  Andrew  Forest  for  being 
a  common  scold.  The  draft  of  the  committee's  report  is 
partly  in  Cromwell's  hand.1 

The  same  year  he  sat  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. Among  his  papers  there  is  a  draft  of  a 
speech  in  Parliament,  in  the  handwriting  of  his  clerk, 
which  doubtless  represents  what  Cromwell  said  or  in- 
tended to  say.  The  King  had  declared  war  against 
France  and  her  ally  Scotland.  Wolsey,  yielding  when  he 
must,  presented  the  need  of  the  throne  and  asked  for  a 
large  grant  of  money,  because  the  King  intended  to  in- 
vade France  in  person.  The  speech  of  Cromwell  com- 
bines most  skillfully  an  appeal  to  patriotism,  readiness 
to  support  the  King,  and  the  suggestion,  conveyed  so 
subtly  that  Henry  could  not  have  been  offended,  that  the 
plan  was  a  poor  one.  He  denounces  the  treachery  of 
France  and  the  wrongs  her  King  has  done  to  England, 
but  he  is  alarmed  by  the  idea  that  Henry  should  put  his 
person  in  danger  across  the  sea.  He  points  out  the  dif- 
ficulty of  bringing  the  Frenchmen  to  meet  in  open  battle 
the  forty  thousand  men  to  be  sent,  the  risk  of  pushing 
on  to  Paris,  leaving  fortresses  in  the  rear,  and  the  im- 
possibility of  England's  finding  coin  and  bullion  enough 
to  feed  so  great  an  army,  "seeing  that  the  inhabitants  of 
Flanders"  (where  provisions  would  have  to  be  bought) 
are  so  anxious  "to  have  much  of  our  money  for  little  of 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  III,  3657. 


144  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

their  victuals."  These  campaigns  might  prove  more  loss 
to  England  than  to  France,  and  reduce  the  realm  to  coin- 
ing leather.  The  true  object  of  English  arms  was  Scot- 
land. "Who  that  intendeth  France  to  win,  with  Scot- 
land let  him  begin."  It  is  folly  to  think  of  holding  pos- 
sessions across  the  sea  when  Scotland  obeys  another 
Prince.  Scotland  once  united  to  England  all  other  pos- 
sessions are  safe.1 

It  was  after  sitting  in  this  Parliament  that  he  wrote 
one  of  the  very  few  purely  personal  letters  which  have 
survived,  and  the  only  one  which  suggests  the  flavor  of 
the  pleasant  conversation  for  which  he  was  famous: 
"Supposing  ye  desire  to  know  the  news  current  in  these 
parts,  for  it  is  said  that  news  refresheth  the  spirit  of  life, 
wherefore  ye  shall  understand  that  by  long  time  I 
amongst  others  have  indured  a  Parliament  which  con- 
tinued by  the  space  of  seventeen  whole  weeks,  where  we 
communed  of  war,  peace,  strife,  contentions,  debate,  mur- 
mur, grudge,  riches,  poverty,  penury,  truth,  falsehood, 
justice,  equity,  deceit,  oppression,  magnanimity,  activity, 
force,  attempraunce,  treason,  murder,  felony,  and  also 
how  a  commonwealth  might  be  edified  and  continued 
within  our  realm.  Howbeit  in  conclusion  we  have  done 
as  our  predecessors  have  been  wont  to  do,  that  is  to  say 
as  well  as  we  might,  and  left  where  we  began."  2 

The  habit  of  not  taking  himself  too  seriously,  the 
friendly  and  familiar  atmosphere  out  of  which  this  comes, 
was  evidently  the  atmosphere  of  Cromwell's  house.  And 
he  seems  to  have  early  displayed  that  ready  gratitude  for 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  III,  2958. 
•Ibid.,  Ill,  3849. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  145 

kindness,  that  fidelity  to  those  who  had  helped  him,  for 
which  he  became  noted  at  home  and  abroad.  People  liked 
to  go  to  his  home  and  remembered  their  visit  with  pleas- 
ure. John  Creke  addresses  him  from  Bilboa  as  "the  dear- 
est man  in  the  world,"  and  says  that  the  recollection  of 
walking  with  Cromwell  in  the  garden  and  talking  of  spir- 
itual things,  makes  him  desperate  with  loneliness.1  Three 
different  men  within  the  year  choose,  among  the  cus- 
tomary superscriptions  for  letters,  such  forms  as  "my 
right  loving  friend,  right  faithful  friend,  heartily  beloved 
friend."  And  several  letters  end  with  words  of  greeting 
to  common  friends.  In  the  little  circle  which  gathered 
round  Cromwell,  his  wife  and  his  mother  played  their 
part.  Correspondents  ask  to  be  remembered  to  them. 
One  wants  the  good  housewife  "to  send  another  plaster 
for  his  knee,"  and  another  desires  to  be  commended  "to 
your  mother,  after  you  my  most  singular  good  friend.2 
These  are  slight  instances,  but  everything  in  the  few  let- 
ters which  have  survived  from  this  early  period  points 
toward  a  merry  and  gentle  house,  visited  by  good  friends 
and  "gossips,"  with  whom  the  Cromwells  shared  the 
pleasures  of  life  down  "to  half  a  fat  doe."  And  it  was  a 
prosperous  house,  for  in  1524  Cromwell  bought  a  sapphire 
ring  worth  in  modern  value  some  £40  and  a  gold  bracelet 
with  a  jacinth  worth  £80. 3 

For  most  of  his  correspondents  Mr.  Thomas  Cromwell 
became  during  the  next  five  years  "The  Right  Worship- 
ful Thomas  Cromwell."  Though  those  who  possessed,  or 
desired  to  claim,  intimacy  choose  the  more  familiar  of  the 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  III,  2394. 

2  Ibid.,  Ill,  2624,  3015,  3502;  IV,  1385. 
•Ibid.,  IV,  166;   IV,  App.,  57. 


146  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

usual  formal  addresses,  as  when  Lord  Berners  addressed 
his  letter  to  "my  well-beloved  friend,"  or  Lord  George 
Grey  endorses  his  "to  my  fellow  and  friend."  The  rea- 
son for  this  greater  social  consideration  appears  plainly 
from  1528  on,  for  his  full  title  then  becomes  "The  Right 
Worshipful  Mr.  Cromwell,  Councilor  to  my  Lord  Car- 
dinal's Most  Honorable  Grace." 

Wolsey,  the  first  man  in  the  kingdom,  whose  wealth 
rivaled  that  of  the  King,  employed  him  as  the  manager 
of  the  revenues  of  his  diocese  of  York,  and  gradually  a 
large  part  of  the  Cardinal's  legal  business  fell  into 
Cromwell's  hands.  As  he  trusted  Cromwell's  capacity, 
Wolsey  naturally  came  to  employ  him  in  the  project  near- 
est to  his  heart — the  establishment  of  his  two  colleges, 
one  of  which  survives  at  Oxford,  a  monument  to  the  love 
which  could  plan  such  a  palace  for  learning,  and  the  pride 
which  blazoned  his  own  insignia  on  every  coign  and  chief 
stone  of  its  walls.  It  was  a  visible  evidence  of  the  secret 
forces  which  were  undermining  mediaeval  institutions  by 
changing  scholastic  habits  of  thought,  that  Wolsey  ob- 
tained in  Rome  a  bull  permitting  the  suppression  of  small- 
er monasteries  in  England  and  the  diversion  of  the  funds 
to  the  establishment  of  his  two  colleges.  For,  as  a  man 
of  the  New  Learning  which  had  spread  in  his  day  from 
Italy  over  Europe,  Wolsey  shared  the  humanists'  dis- 
like of  the  ascetic  ideal,  and  was  prepared  to  make  war 
on  the  results  of  that  exaggeration  of  it  which  had  left 
Europe  covered  with  thousands  of  monasteries,  whose 
inmates  no  longer  played  any  very  useful  part  in  the 
changed  life  of  the  world. 

In  this  conversion  of  ancient  'foundations,  which  turned 


ITHOMAS  CROMWELL  147 

monasteries  into  colleges  and  substituted  professors  and 
students  for  monks,  Cromwell  was  Wolsey's  most  active 
agent.  And  in  this  service  he  gained  hatred.  In  any 
suppression  of  the  kind  there  must  be  suffering  to  those 
who  lose  an  assured  living.  Hatred  is  apt  to  follow,  even 
in  the  gentler  atmosphere  of  this  century.  The  sixteenth 
century  was  anything  but  gentle,  and  therefore  it  is  not 
surprising  to  find  a  letter  to  Wolsey  in  France  at  the  end 
of  August,  1527,  telling  him  that  "incredible  things  are 
reported  about  Allen  (Cromwell's  coadjutor)  and  Crom- 
well, as  I  have  heard  from  the  King  and  others."1  What 
these  "incredible  things"  were  does  not  appear.  Crom- 
well, like  most  men  in  subordinate  positions,  from  royal 
ministers  to  the  pages  of  a  Baron's  waiting-room,  took, 
from  the  needs  of  suitors,  fees  and  presents  for  such  in- 
fluence as  they  might  have  with  their  superiors.2  And  it 
is  more  than  probable  that,  during  this  suppression  of 
monasteries  and  the  pensioning  of  their  inmates,  Crom- 
well made  money  which,  to  one  of  more  delicate  feelings 
of  honor  than  those  of  the  average  man  of  his  day,  would 
have  seemed  to  soil  the  hand  that  took  it.  But  there  are 
indications  that  the  things  reported  were  "incredible"  and, 
to  a  large  extent,  the  result  of  the  hatred  of  the  sufferers 
by  the  suppression,  and  its  opponents. 

In  the  first  place,  we  know  of  these  charges 
only  from  letters  which  express  disbelief  in  them, 
the  one  quoted  above,  the  one  quoted  below,  and 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  IV,  3360. 

2  "Es  lag  im  Geist  dieser  und  auch  noch  der  folgenden  Zeit  das  ungescheut 
furstliche  Diener  sich  die  Hande  schmieren  liessen."     Ulmann,  Maximilian,  I, 
page  813.     A  dozen  similar  citations  from  men  who  know  the  period  might  be 
given. 


I48  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

one  from  John  Rushe,  a  helper  in  the  work, 
who  wrote  to  Cromwell,  "You  would  be  astonished  to 
learn  what  lies  are  told  about  us  in  these  parts."  1  In  the 
second  place,  an  investigation  evidently  took  place,  for? 
in  the  beginning  of  November,  John  Cheking  wrote  Crom- 
well that  various  reports  were  spread  in  Oxford  about 
him,  which  he  is  glad  to  know  proved  false.2  And  the 
next  year,  when  Wolsey  had  fallen  from  power,  Stephen 
Vaughan,  a  servant  and  friend,  who  did  not  hesitate  to 
write  a  letter  of  stern  warning  and  reproof  when  he 
thought  it  needed,  writes :  "You  are  more  hated  for  your 
master's  sake  than  for  anything  which  I  think  you  have 
wrongfully  done  against  any  man."  3  At  Wolsey 's  fall 
Cromwell  was  naked  and  open  to  his  enemies.  The  Lon- 
don burghers  and  the  House  of  Commons  were  apt  to  in- 
volve him  in  their  vengeful  feelings  toward  Wolsey,  the 
incarnation  of  the  idea  of  the  temporal  power  of  the 
clergy  against  which  they  so  strongly  protested.  Crom- 
well stood  day  after  day  in  the  House  of  Commons  as  the 
chief  obstacle  to  bar  that  vengeance.  If  charges  of  un- 
usual peculation  or  extortion  could  have  been  supported 
by  any  sort  of  evidence,  it  would  have  been  easy  to  use  the 
hatred  of  the  master  to  overwhelm  the  man.  And  even  if 
Cromwell,  as  seems  probable,4  had  obtained  privately  the 
royal  assent  to  defend  Wolsey,  this  would  not  necessarily 
have  saved  him  from  assault.  Henry  was  unable  to  de- 
fend Wolsey  against  his  enemies,  and  had  to  send  se- 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  IV,  6110. 
•Ibid.,  IV,  4916. 

•Ibid.,  IV,  6036.     Compare  VI,  1385, 
•Jbid.,  IV,  Appendix,  288, 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  149 

cretly  to  assure  him  that  he  was  not  altogether  aban- 
doned. 

Wolsey  fell  from  the  very  faithfulness  with  which  he 
had  served  his  King.  He  had  opposed  the  war  which 
rendered  heavy  taxes  necessary,  and  then,  when  the 
storm  of  unpopulariy  which  frightened  even  Henry 
arose,  he  shouldered  all  the  blame.1  And  he  had  laid 
himself  open  to  that  indictment  for  the  crime  of  praemu- 
nire,  under  which  he  was  stripped  of  most  of  his  property 
and  power,  by  bringing  into  England  his  commission  of 
Papal  Legate  at  Henry's  own  desire.  The  King  would 
not  stand  by  his  unpopular  minister.  Henry  had  the 
temperament  of  a  tyrant,  but  he  had  also  the  Tudor  in- 
stinct for  kingship,  and  though  he  might  disregard  the 
opposition  of  this  or  that  class,  he  never  risked  too  firm 
a  resistance  to  any  feeling  he  had  reason  to  believe  com- 
mon to  the  mass  of  his  people.  And  the  bulk  of  the  na- 
tion wished  for  Wolsey's  fall. 

The  King  was  displeased  with  the  great  minister  be- 
cause he  had  failed  to  get  from  the  Pope  permission  to  set 
aside  the  Queen  and  crown  another.  But  apparently 
Henry,  while  he  wished  Wolsey's  fall,  did  not  desire  his 
utter  destruction,  and  so  when  Cromwell,  faithful  in  ad- 
versity, became  the  prop  of  his  master's  falling  house,  he 
saved  it  from  ruin.  He  succeeded,  by  skillful  bribery  of 
Wolsey's  chief  opponents  and  by  open  defense  before  Par- 
liament, in  preventing  his  attainder  for  treason.  Caven- 
dish, Wolsey's  gentleman  usher  and  biographer,  writes : 
"There  could  nothing  be  spoken  against  my  lord  in  the 
Parliament  House  but  he  would  answer  it  incontinent  or 

•Hall's  Chronicle. 


150  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

else  take  until  the  next  day,  against  which  time  he  would 
revert  to  my  lord  to  know  what  answer  he  should  make 
in  his  behalf ;  insomuch  that  there  was  no  matter  alleged 
against  my  lord  but  that  he  was  ever  ready  furnished  with 
a  sufficient  answer;  so  that  at  length  for  his  honest  be- 
haviour in  his  master's  cause,  he  grew  into  such  estima- 
tion in  every  man's  opinion,  that  he  was  esteemed  to  be 
the  most  faithfullest  servant  to  his  master  of  all  other, 
wherein  he  was  of  all  men  greatly  commended." 

No  doubt  he  used  the  turn  of  the  tide  of  feeling  which 
drifted  his  master  out  of  danger,  to  further  his  own  for- 
tune. But  they  who  in  these  most  recent  times  assert 
that  he  was  faithful  merely  in  the  selfish  hope  of  winning 
praise,  not  only  choose  to  attribute  the  meanest  possible 
motive  to  an  action,  but  forget  that  he  could  not  have  been 
sure  of  success  when  he  began  the  perilous  task  of  de- 
fending his  hated  patron.  Wolsey  trusted  him,  and  writes 
often  in  such  phrases  as  "  mine  only  aider  in  this  mine  in- 
tolerable anxiety  and  heaviness."1 

Wolsey  did  not  take  Cromwell's  advice  to  submit  and 
return  to  the  affairs  of  his  archbishopric.  He  sought 
French  influences  for  his  reinstatement.  The  Spanish 
Ambassador  reports  that  he  sent  messages  suggesting 
forcible  outside  interference  with  Henry's  divorce.2  He 
seems  to  have  written  to  Rome  to  cause  pressure  to  be 
brought  on  the  King  for  his  own  recall ;  at  all  events  he 
hoped  for  Papal  influence.*  The  Duke  of  Norfolk,  his  suc- 
cessor in  the  State,  feared  and  Anne  Boleyn  hated  him. 
They  got  hold  of  Wolsey's  physician,  who  could  give  ev- 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  IV,  6098. 

•  Calendar  State  Papers,  Spanish,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  601,  619,  692. 

8  Ibid.,  page  805. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  151 

idence  that  was  quite  enough  to  excite  the  fierce  anger 
of  Henry  against  any  one  who  opposed  a  cherished  plan. 
The  physician  perhaps  distorted  what  he  knew  or  added 
to  it.1  Wolsey  was  summoned  to  London,  and  his  death 
on  the  journey  probably  saved  him  from  the  scaffold. 

In  the  beginning  of  1531,  about  a  month  after  Wol- 
sey's death,  Cromwell  became  a  Royal  Councilor,2  an  ap- 
pointment which  made  it  possible  for  him  to  be  present  at 
Councils  of  State,  but  did  not  necessarily  give  him  any 
influence  upon  State  policy.  This,  by  the  testimony  of 
the  foreign  ambassadors,  was  largely  determined  by  the 
Duke  of  Norfolk  and  the  other  relatives  of  Anne  Boleyn. 
That  Cromwell  should  have  passed  from  Wolsey's  serv- 
ice to  the  King's  is  nothing  extraordinary.  Large  num- 
bers of  the  Cardinal's  "men,"  from  yeomen  of  the  guard 
up,  did  the  same  thing,  and  the  careers  of  Bonner,  after- 
ward Bishop  of  London,  and  Gardiner,  afterward  Bishop 
of  Winchester,  were  helped  rather  than  hindered  by  the 
fact  that  the  one  had  been  Wolsey's  chaplain  and  the 
other  his  secretary.  Gardiner,  as  one  of  Cromwell's  in- 
timates wrote  with  disgust,  refused  to  lift  a  finger  to  help 
his  former  patron.8 

Of  the  way  in  which  Cromwell  became  the  King's  man 
we  have  two  contemporary  accounts.  Ten  years  after- 
ward Reginald  Pole  wrote  to  the  Emperor  to  prove  that 
Henry  VIII  had  become  Antichrist  through  the 
seductions  of  the  diabolically  inspired  Cromwell.  He 
says  that  on  one  occasion,  after  Henry's  at- 

»  Calendar  State  Papers,  Spanish,  Vol.  IV,  page  819. 

1  A  letter,  dated  January  10,  is  addressed  to  him  as  "One  of  the  King's  most 
gracious  Council." 

*  Letters  and  Papers,  Dom.  Series,  Vol.  IV,  6112. 


152  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

tempted  divorce  had  brought  him  into  conflict 
with  the  Papacy  and  the  Empire,  "when  he  saw 
the  strongest  men  of  the  State  drawing  back  from  the 
affair  to  such  an  extent  that  even  Wolsey,  smitten  with 
dismay,  had  begun  to  withdraw  his  service,  being  very 
much  disturbed  in  mind,  he  observed  with  a  great  sigh  that 
he  had  sought  a  divorce  from  Rome  in  the  hope  of  getting 
it,  but  if  the  Roman  Church  was  determined  to  deny  it, 
he  would  not  go  any  further  in  the  matter.  He  remained 
in  that  state  two  days,  and  then  began  to  renew  his  efforts 
more  sharply  than  ever."  x  Pole  says  he  got  the  King's 
remark  from  one  who  heard  it,  and  thus  far  he  is  prob- 
ably telling  facts. 

He  then  goes  on  to  explain  the  cause  of  the 
change  by  relating  what,  from  his  own  account,  is 
conjecture.  He  says  Satan  sent  to  the  King  a  messenger 
"whose  real  name  was  that  of  the  demon  by  whose  im- 
pulse he  acted,"  "but  to  begin  with  the  name  he  received 
from  his  family  before  he  fell  into  the  hands  of  demons 
and  degenerated  into  their  nature ;"  it  is  Cromwell.  Pole 
gives  a  long  speech  (thirteen  hundred  and  fifty  words) 
which  he  supposes  Cromwell  delivered  to  Henry.  It  is 
an  attempt  to  prove  that  a  king  may  do  as  he  pleases, 
without  regard  to  the  laws  of  God  or  man,  and  that  there- 
fore Henry  ought  to  declare  himself  head  of  the  English 
Church  and  deny  all  authority  to  the  Pope.  Pole  gives  no 
authority  for  believing  that  Cromwell  had  any  such  in- 
terview, and  says  expressly  that  he  did  not  hear  Crom- 
well's speech  or  know  what  he  said,  but  there  is  nothing 
in  the  speech  as  he  gives  it  which  "he  has  not  heard  either 

1  Apologia  ad  Carolum  Quint um,  page  110. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  153 

from  that  devil's  nuncio  himself  or,  at  different  times, 
from  his  friends." 

Pole  expressly  tells  us  elsewhere  that  he  had 
only  spoken  to  Cromwell  once l  in  his  life,  and 
gives  an  account  of  the  interview.  It  makes  no  mention 
of  the  very  point  of  Cromwell's  advice  to  the  King,  the 
headship  of  the  English  Church  and  the  denial  of  Papal 
authority.  Nor  did  Henry's  first  assumption  of  the  title 
of  Head  of  the  English  Church,  in  January,  1531,  nec- 
essarily imply  the  denial  of  Papal  authority.  It  seems 
evident  that  Pole,  in  the  account  of  this  interview  of 
Cromwell  with  the  King,  which  he  gives  as  the  cause  of 
his  becoming  a  Royal  Councilor,  is  making  a  conjecture 
based  on  Cromwell's  subsequent  activity  in  passing  and 
defending  the  Act  of  Supremacy  of  1534,  which  did  sep- 
arate England  from  the  Papacy.  And,  as  he  tells  the 
story,  the  conjecture  is  a  violent  one.  He  represents  the 
King  as  in  despair  because  Wolsey  had  drawn  back  from 
the  attempt  to  secure  the  divorce.  This  scene  must  there- 
fore have  taken  place  before  the  fall  of  Wolsey,  in  Octo- 
ber, 1529.  Cromwell  was  not  appointed  to  the  Royal 
Council  until  1531,  and  it  was  two  years  later  before  the 
Spanish  Ambassador  became  aware  that  Cromwell  was  of 
sufficient  importance  to  mention  his  name  in  a  dispatch. 
If  this  interview  with  the  King  ever  took  place,  why  was 
the  man  who  suggested  the  policy  of  England  kept  so 
long  in  the  background?  And  how  did  Pole  find  out 
what  the  Spanish  Ambassador,  whose  business  it  was  to 
know  the  intrigues  at  Court,  was  ignorant  of — the  im- 

1  E.v  illo  uno  congressu  et  colloquio. 


154  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

portant  fact  that  the  King  had  a  new  all-powerful  secret 
councilor  ? 

The  other  contemporary  account  of  the  way  in  which 
Cromwell  entered  the  King's  service  is  not  a  conjecture, 
made  in  a  highly  rhetorical  polemic  by  a  man  who  in 
all  his  life  had  only  a  single  talk  with  Cromwell,  but  a 
plain  statement  of  fact  by  one  who  saw  him  often.  Cav- 
endish, Wolsey's  gentleman  usher,  writing  his  master's 
life,  points  out  that  Cromwell,  at  the  time  of  Wolsey's 
fall,  not  only  won  men's  respect  by  faithfulness  to  fallen 
fortunes,  but  also,  having  occasion  to  see  the  King  fre- 
quently in  connection  with  the  Cardinal's  property,  by 
"witty  demeanor"  and  capacity  for  business  "enforced  the 
King  to  repute  him  a  very  wise  man  and  a  meet  instrument 
to  serve  His  Grace,  as  it  afterward  came  to  pass."  And 
this  fits  exactly  into  the  fact  that  for  a  long  period  after 
his  reception  into  the  Royal  Council,  Cromwell  had  merely 
legal  and  business  affairs  to  manage.  The  only  exception 
was  a  disastrously  unsuccessful  attempt  to  induce  the 
King  to  employ  in  his  quarrel  with  the  Pope  the  pen  of 
William  Tyndale,  then  abroad  to  avoid  the  laws  against 
heresy.  Cromwell  became  a  Privy  Councilor  as  he  had 
gained  wealth,  by  being,  in  the  phrase  of  Tacitus,  "equal 
to  business  and  not  above  it." 

He  had  accumulated  a  comfortable  fortune  before  he 
entered  the  royal  service.  In  July,  1529,  he  made  a  will 
in  which  he  left  about  £1660  and  real  estate  yielding  in 
1534  and  1535  an  income  of  some  £163  a  year.  As 
Cromwell  considered  five  per  cent,  a  safe  and  procurable 
rate  of  income  from  land,  this  represents  a  total  prop- 
erty of  some  £5000,  equal  in  modern  purchasing  power 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  155 

to  £50,000  to  £6o,ooo.1  He  had  added  to  the  sapphire 
ring  and  gold  bracelet  a  number  of  rings,  plain  jewels, 
intaglios  or  enameled  stones.  He  shared  the  prevalent 
taste  for  silver  plate  and  owned  a  number  of  spoons,  gob- 
lets, flagons  and  cups.23  His  wardrobe  was  that  of  a 
well-to-do  gentleman  of  what  might  be  called  the  upper 
middle  class.  He  dressed,  usually,  in  black  or  russet,  but 
occasionally  put  on  a  coat  of  dark  blue,  or  a  green  coat 
"welted  with  green  velvet."  He  sometimes  wore  the 
orange  tawny  which  was  the  dress  of  gentlemen  servants 
of  Wolsey.  He  owned  three  rings,  one  set  with  a  rock 
ruby,  one  with  a  table  diamond,  and  one  with  a  turquoise. 
He  had  three  swords,  one  of  them  by  a  good  maker  in  a 
black  velvet  scabbard.  His  hats  and  caps  were  black  satin 
or  velvet.4 

There  is  nothing  in  the  State  papers  to  indicate  that  he 
had  any  particular  weight  within  the  Council  until  the 
latter  half  of  1532,  eighteen  months  after  he  entered  it. 
The  Parliament  of  1532  passed  thirty-four  bills.  Drafts 
of  three  acts  for  that  Parliament,  written  or  corrected  by 
Cromwell,  have  come  down  to  us — one  the  germ  of  the 
future  Act  of  Supremacy,  one  for  the  Improvement  of 
Seaports,  one  for  the  Improvement  of  Husbandry.  Only 
one  of  these  was  passed,  which  indicates  that  as  yet  he 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  IV,  5772;  IX,  478;  VII,  1610;  IV,  5772. 

'Ibid.,  IV,  3197. 

1  It  seems  to  have  been  the  ambition  of  all  English  families  to  have  silver. 
An  Italian  traveler  of  1500  records  his  astonishment  at  the  amount  of  plate  to 
be  seen  in  the  houses  of  ordinary  people.  "In  one  single  street  named  Strand 
there  are  fifty-two  goldsmith  shops,  so  rich,  and  full  of  silver  vessels,  great  and 
small,  that  in  all  the  shops  of  Milan,  Rome,  Venice  and  Florence  put  together 
I  do  not  think  there  would  be  found  so  many  of  the  magnificence  that  are  to  be 
seen  in  London." — Camden  Society,  Vol.  37,  page  43. 

4  Letters  and  Papers,  IV,  3197. 


156  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

was  not  employed  in  the  more  important  affairs  of  the 
Crown.  But  by  the  middle  of  the  year  he  was  "in  the 
high  tide  of  prosperity  and  overwhelmed  with  affairs."  1 
And  in  October  he  crossed  to  France,  the  only  com- 
moner appointed  for  the  train  of  twenty-five  men  of  title 
who  accompanied  Henry  to  an  interview  with  Francis  I 
at  Calais.2 

On  his  return  his  influence  is  evident.  His  cor- 
respondence, which  had  been  increasing  during  the 
year,  now  began  to  rise  to  enormous  proportions.  From 
this  time  until  his  death,  on  the  average,  forty  per  cent,  of 
the  documents  calendared  for  each  year  in  the  govern- 
mental series  of  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VII,  are 
addressed  to  Cromwell.  In  April,  1533,  the  Imperial 
Ambassador  perceived  his  importance,  and  mentioned  him 
in  a  dispatch  as  "Cromwell  who  is  powerful  with  the 
King."  3  This  late  perception  of  the  importance  of  Crom- 
well in  the  Royal  Council  was  not  due  to  the  fact  that  his 
power  had  been  artificially  concealed.4  The  testimony 
of  the  State  Papers  points  to  the  more  natural  conclusion 
that  the  growth  of  his  influence  had  been  so  gradual  as  to 
escape  notice  until  it  was  well  established.  Wolsey  pos- 
sessed great  ability  and  a  power  of  work  which  enabled 
him  on  one  occasion  to  write  twelve  hours  on  a  stretch 
without  food  or  exercise.5  Norfolk  was  incapable  of  the 
tact,  work  and  insight  necessary  in  the  crisis  through 

1  Letters  and  Papers.  V,  1210. 

•Ibid.,  V.  Appendix,  33. 

1  Ibid.,  VI,  p.  168.  There  is  a  previous  simple  mention  of  his  name  in  a 
dispatch  of  February  15  (Calendars  of  State  Papers,  Spanish,  Vol.  IV,  part  II, 
p.  601). 

«  The  hypothesis  of  Mr.  Merriman. 

0  Cavendish,  Life  of  Wolsey,  page  96. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  157 

which  England  was  passing.  Henry  openly  regretted  his 
great  minister's  death  and  rated  the  leading  councilors 
for  their  lack  of  skill.1  The  King  promoted  Cromwell  be- 
cause of  proved  capacity.  A  list  of  his  chief  titles  shows 
the  offices  conferred  upon  him  and  marks  his  rise  in 
dignity  and  power.  Privy  Councilor,  Master  of  the 
Jewels,  Clerk  of  the  Hanaper,  Master  of  the  King's 
Wards,  Principal  Secretary  to  the  King,  Master  of  the 
Rolls,  Vicar  General  and  Visitor  General  of  Monasteries, 
Lord  Privy  Seal,  Vicegerent  of  the  King  in  Spirituals, 
Baron  Cromwell,  Knight  of  the  Garter,  Earl  of  Essex.2 
And  his  actual  power  was  greater  than  his  official  author- 
ity. For  eight  years  the  internal  affairs  of  England  passed 
through  his  hands. 

No  English  statesman  has  ever  had  a  more  difficult 
task.  The  age  was  pregnant  with  disasters  to  the  leading 
states  of  Europe.  Germany  was  consolidating  the  power 
of  scores  of  petty  princedoms  undermining  the  basis  of 
central  authority,  destroying  the  sense  of  national  unity. 
Among  her  people  there  was  forming  that  fierce  hatred 
about  religious  opinions  which  the  greed  of  her  princes 
was  to  use  as  an  excuse  to  make  her  the  fighting  ground 
of  all  the  nations  of  Europe.  Italy,  bleeding  at 
every  vein  from  the  struggle  of  France  and 
Spain  over  her  conquest,  lay  helpless  before  the  for- 
eigners who  wasted  her  fields  and  sacked  her  cities.  In 
the  Netherlands  fear  and  hate  were  getting  ready  to  turn 
the  revolt  against  Spain  into  one  of  the  bitterest  of  civil 

1  Calendars,  Spanish,  IV.  part  I.  page  819. 

•  See  Merriman's  list,  Vol.  I,  p.  143.  He  also  gives  a  list  of  Cromwell's 
minor  appointments,  Vol.  II,  p.  183. 


158  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

strifes.  Wise  Frenchmen  saw  ominous  signs  of  the  out- 
break of  those  intermittent  Huguenot  wars  which  rilled 
France  with  fire  and  blood  for  forty  years  and  threatened 
to  put  a  Spanish  dynasty  on  the  throne.  Spain  was  fall- 
ing under  that  Hapsburg  absolutism,  supported  by  na- 
tional pride,  defended  by  the  money  of  the  New  World 
and  the  pressure  of  the  Inquisition,  which,  after  stimulat- 
ing a  wondrous  bloom  of  literature  and  art  and  guiding 
a  marvelous  output  of  energy,  crushed  the  race  for  cen- 
turies into  national  nervous  prostration. 

England  was  to  escape  all  these  evils.  She  alone  was 
to  be  free  from  protracted  civil  war  about  religion,  from 
the  misery  and  shame  of  foreign  armies  trampling  her 
soil,  from  a  kind  of  absolutism  which  destroyed  the  stand- 
ing ground  of  future  liberty. 

Cromwell  could  not  have  foreseen  these  miseries  which 
befell  England's  neighbors  after  his  death,  but  he  could 
perceive,  and  set  himself  to  fight,  the  tendencies  which 
produced  them.  The  most  dangerous  of  them  appeared 
to  be  the  separatist  influences  of  feudalism.  In  the  dis- 
orders of  the  ninth  and  tenth  century  a  method  of  land 
tenure  had  bred  a  bastard  government,  the  child,  not  of 
power  and  consent,  but  of  power  and  circumstance.  The 
scholastic  theology  had  given  divine  sanction  to  this 
progeny  by  a  scheme  of  the  world  in  which  God  figured 
as  a  supreme  over-lord.  During  the  last  half  of  the  fif- 
teenth century  the  critical  spirit  of  the  Renascence  had, 
to  the  minds  of  many  men,  destroyed  belief  in  the  divinity 
of  the  mediaeval  scheme  of  the  world.  Some  time  before 
this  weakening  of  the  mental  habits  which  helped  to  sup- 
port feudalism,  it  had  ceased  to  be  the  necessary  allevia- 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  159 

tion  of  a  bad  situation.  Barbarian  invasions  had  come  to 
an  end.  Trade  and  manufactures  enabled  landless  men 
to  live  outside  of  serfdom  or  the  profession  of  fighting. 
Money  exchange,  replacing  barter,  decreased  the  social, 
political  and  economic  weight  of  landowners.  Barons 
who  feared  not  God  neither  regarded  man,  trembled  when 
siege  guns  were  leveled  at  the  walls  of  their  ancestral 
castles.  The  fierce  rush  of  Swiss  mountaineers,  the  un- 
broken phalanx  of  the  Flemish  artisans,  the  arrow  flight 
of  English  yeomen,  had  proved  to  the  astonished  knights 
that  a  horse  is  a  vain  thing  for  safety.  The  day  of  chiv- 
alry was  gone.  The  rough  game  of  the  tournament 
long  survived  as  a  fashionable  amusement;  but  it  lost 
its  meaning.  The  ideal  of  chivalry  went  to  seed  in  the 
formal  phrases  of  gallantry,  and  few  knights  even  tried 
to  remember,  like  Bayard,  that  privilege  implies  duty. 

But  feudalism  had  struck  its  roots  too  deep  into  selfish 
passion  and  local  pride  to  be  exterminated  easily.  It  was 
a  tremendous  task  for  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  in  Spain 
and  the  Valois  in  France  to  beat  it  into  subjection  to  the 
Crown,  as  the  symbol  of  the  new  sentiment,  almost  un- 
known to  the  middle  ages,  the  sentiment  of  national 
patriotism.  In  England,  at  the  very  time  when  it  seemed 
to  be  dying,  feudalism  had  revived  in  a  hybrid  form. 
Edward  Third's  marriages  of  his  children  to  the  heirs 
and  heiresses  of  great  landed  estates,  had  produced  nobles 
uniting  feudal  influence  to  the  authority  of  royal  blood, 
and  the  aristocratic  factions  of  the  White  and  Red  Rose 
had  for  two  generations  marred  the  peace  of  England  in 
a  struggle  for  the  Crown.  Henry  VIII,  whose  favorite 
emblem  was  the  Red  Rose  imposed  on  the  White,  was 


160  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  first  King  for  more  than  a  century  who  inherited  an 
undisputed  title  to  the  throne.  He  followed  the  policy, 
mingling  ruthlessness  and  craft  with  wisdom,  by  which 
his  father  had  won  the  nation's  loyalty  to  a  crown  picked 
up  on  the  battlefield  of  Bosworth.  Like  his  father,  he 
tried  to  fill  his  Council  with  men  of  great  ability  rather 
than  men  of  high  birth.  He  realized  that  the  support 
of  the  Tudor  dynasty  was  the  middle  class,  so  strong  in 
England  that,  to  the  astonishment  of  the  French  chroni- 
cler, the  barons  had  not  dared  to  plunder  and  slaughter 
the  people,  even  in  the  merciless  days  of  the  wars  of  the 
Roses.  These  strongest  of  England's  children  dreaded 
the  fires  of  civil  war,  and  were  willing  to  commit  her 
destinies  to  a  powerful,  if  need  be  a  tyrannical,  throne. 
Henry  VIII  continued  the  work  of  suppressing  the  rema- 
nent  abuses  by  which  the  aristocracy  used  their  influence 
to  wrong  their  weaker  neighbors.  He  employed  the 
power  of  the  Crown,  which  his  father  had  made  efficient 
to  enforce  common  law  in  the  Court  of  Star  Chamber,  to 
break  the  power  of  the  little  great  men  of  different  locali- 
ties. "Bearing,"  or  the  aiding  of  evildoers  to  continue 
crime  or  escape  its  punishment;  "maintenance,"  or  the 
willingness  of  a  lord  to  stand  by  his  "man"  though  thick 
and  thin;  "livery,"  which  was  usually  the  symbol  of  an 
expectation  of  maintenance  and  the  willingness  to  back 
the  quarrel  of  the  maintainer;  "embracery,"  where  bear- 
ing showed  itself  in  the  attempt  to  coerce  or  bribe  a  jury 
— all  felt  the  pressure  of  the  king's  justice. 

The  power  of  feudalism  was  broken  when  Cromwell 
became  the  chief  man  in  England  under  the  King,  but  the 
instincts  and  habits  bred  by  it  survived.  Into  the  Tudor 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  161 

struggle  to  suppress  them  Cromwell  threw  himself  with 
an  energy  which  recked  not  of  obstacles.  His  zeal  for  the 
support  of  the  general  authority  of  law  tended  to  make 
him  not  too  solicitous  for  justice  to  the  individual.  Most 
men  who  have  fought  deep-rooted  traditions  and  habits 
of  lawlessness  in  feudal,  brigand  or  frontier  communities, 
have  been  driven  toward  the  temper  of  the  lyncher.  The 
epithet  of  "sinister,"  which  modern  historians  are  so  fond 
of  applying  to  Cromwell,  is  not  well  chosen;  but  his 
aims,  and  the  opposition  to  them,  constantly  strengthened 
in  him  some  of  the  characteristics  of  the  type  which  the 
Italians  label  "nomo  terribile" 

There  was  no  one  left  who  could  openly  re- 
sist the  King  or  the  national  law.  The  Duke 
of  Buckingham,  last  of  the  great  nobles  of  the 
old  style,  who  kept  solitary  state  almost  royal,  had  died 
on  the  scaffold  in  1521.  But  everywhere  the  forces  of 
disorderly  local  privilege  needed  the  strong  hand  of  a 
master.  Men  were  quick  on  the  dagger.1  A  justice  of 
the  peace  reports  a  quarrel  with  a  courtier.  "He  said, 
'I  lied  like  a  fool/  and  I  that  'He  lied  like  a  knave.'  Then 
he  drew  his  dagger  and  struck  me  on  the  head,  and  I 
drew  mine,  but  the  other  gentlemen  stepped  between  us."  2 
Strong  bands  of  men  broke  into  parks,  killed  the  deer  and 
set  the  law  at  defiance.3  As  when,  on  one  occasion,  the 
parson  drank  at  the  inn  with  the  young  bloods  of  the 
neighborhood  until  they  sallied  out  at  two  in  the  morn- 
ing, some  in  harness,  all  with  cross-bows  or  long-bows, 

1  e.g.,  Letters  and  Papers,  XII,  part  I,  129. 

a  Ibid.,  XIII,  part  II,  578. 

*e.g..  Ibid.,  XIII,  318,  and  Appendix,  7, 


162  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

to  hunt  in  the  neighboring  park,  threatening  to  kill  the 
keeper  unless  he  kept  quiet  about  their  poaching.  The 
great  lords  near  Winchester  dammed  the  streams,  made 
a  marsh  and  destroyed  the  salmon  fishing,  and  tried  to 
stop  those  who  broke  down  the  "waterworks"  in  obedi- 
ence to  statute.  Latimer  wrote  from  Hartlebury :  "Here 
is  much  bolstering  and  bearing,  and  malefactors  do  not 
lack  supporters.  What  is  needed  is  a  good  Sheriff,  and 
that  is  not  easy  to  find."  *  The  country  squires  of  the 
borders  oppressed  their  humble  neighbors.  "A  poor 
man,  following  the  tread  of  an  ox  that  had  been  taken, 
found  him  lying  in  a  petty  gentleman's  floor,  and  durst 
not  say  a  word  for  fear  of  his  life."  z  On  the  Welsh 
border  things  were  so  far. out  of  order  that  the  Bishop  of 
Chester  reported  "by  the  common  law  they  will  never  be 
redressed." 

Cromwell  supervised  the  enforcement  of  law  without 
fear.  The  most  disorderly  parts  of  England  were  on 
the  marches  of  Scotland  and  Wales,  where  the  ideas  and 
habits  of  feudalism  were  little  affected  by  social 
and  economic  changes.  He  induced  Parliament  to 
extinguish  the  feudal  courts  of  the  Bishopric  of 
Durham  3  and,  according  to  memoranda  in  his  notebook, 
wished  to  extinguish  all  franchises  under  which  powerful 
wrongdoers  might  take  refuge  from  the  heavy  hand  of 
the  King's  justice.  He  continued  the  work  of  limiting, 
and  he  wished  to  abolish  the  right  of  sanctuary,  by  which 
criminals  who  reached  the  liberties  of  certain  churches, 
might  dwell  there  untouched  of  law,  or,  if  they  wished, 

*  Letters  and  Papers,  XIII,  part  I,  1258. 
'  Letters  and  Papers,  XIV,  Appendix,  7. 

*  The  County  Palatine  of  Durham,  Lapsley,  pp.  1,  99,  187-»54,  note  255. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  163 

withdraw  unarrested  from  England.  The  five  counties 
of  the  North  were  put  under  a  permanent  Royal  Council, 
as  the  King  said,  "for  the  conservation  of  those  counties 
in  quiet,  and  the  administration  of  common  justice." 

Wales  and  its  marches  were  placed  in  charge  of  a  sim- 
ilar Council,  whose  decrees  were  executed  by  a  bishop  with 
a  strong  sense  of  injustice.  "Two  outlaws  were  brought 
in.  We  have  sent  them  for  trial,  and  tomorrow  they  shall 
have  justice  done  them.  God  pardon  their  souls.  Two 
days  later  four  other  outlaws  were  brought  to  us.  Two 
had  been  at  large  for  sixteen  years.  Three  were  alive 
and  one  slain,  brought  in  a  sack  trussed  on  a  horse.  We 
have  had  him  hanged  on  the  gallows  here  as  a  sign.  All 
thieves  in  Wales  quake  for  fear."  l  And  he  adds  as  a 
postscript  a  "list  of  thieves  slain."  By  December,  1537, 
this  bishop,  with  a  halter  for  crozier,  could  write  from 
Shrewsbury:  "All  is  quiet  here,  save  now  and  then  a 
little  conveying  amongst  themselves  for  a  fat  sheep  or  a 
bullock,  which  is  impossible  to  be  amended,  for  thieves  I 
found  them  and  thieves  I  shall  leave  them."  2  The  good 
work  in  the  Welsh  borders  was  rendered  permanent  by 
the  incorporation  of  Wales  into  England  and  its  division 
into  shires. 

It  is  evident  that  Cromwell  liked  to  be  known  as  a 
promoter  of  stern  and  equal  justice,  for  a  series  of  letters 
have  survived  written  by  suppliants,  who  either  believed 
him  to  be  a  defender  of  the  rights  of  the  weak  or,  at  least, 
hoped  to  please  by  calling  him  so.  Edward  Beck,  of 
Manchester,  whom  he  sent  to  Ireland  in  1535,  writes: 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  X,  130. 

2  Letters  and  Papers,  XII,  part  II,  1237. 


164  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

"The  country  is  in  good  peace  and  quiet,  and  in  greater 
fear  of  justice  than  it  has  been  these  forty  years."  Crom- 
well made  many  enemies  by  his  administration  of  Eng- 
land. None  of  his  modern  biographers  has  been  at  the 
pains  to  point  out  that  he  also  made  many  friends.  In 
his  character  there  was  joined  to  that  unscrupulous  sever- 
ity which  marked  all  the  efficient  governments  of  his 
time,  a  trait  of  humanity  not  so  common.  A  man  sus- 
pected of  offenses  in  the  North  appeals  to  Cromwell. 
Sir  William  Goring  writes :  "He  would  rather  die  than 
appear  before  my  Lord  of  Norfolk,  he  is  so  extreme. 
And  he  trusts  you  will  hear  him."  *  Latimer,  commend- 
ing a  poor  man's  cause,  writes  that  he  thinks  Cromwell 
was  set  up  "to  hear  and  help  the  little  ones  of  God  in  their 
distress ;"  2  and  Maude  Carew,  in  a  grateful  letter,  "prays 
God  to  prosper  and  continue  his  Lordship  to  the  comfort 
of  all  poor  widows."  A  prisoner  gladly  answers  Crom- 
well's agent,  sent  to  look  after  poor  prisoners,  by  a  com- 
plaint of  evil  treatment.3  Another,  asking  for  further 
help,  quotes  his  charitable  pity  in  delivering  him  from 
Ludgate  Prison.4  The  widow  of  the  Marquis  of  Dorset 
writes  to  thank  him  and  ask  for  more  help,  because  she 
has  "no  other  succor  in  all  her  troubles."  5  She  com- 
mends to  his  care  her  son  at  Court,  to  whom  he  has  al- 
ready shown  kindness.  "Whenever  you  shall  see 
him  in  any  large  playing  or  great  usual  swearing  or  any 
other  demeanor  unmeet  for  him  to  use,  which  I  fear  me 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  VII,  1534. 
•Ibid.,  XI,  1374. 
"Ibid.,  IX,  431. 
'Ibid.,   IX,  1133. 
•Ibid.,  V,  926. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  165 

shall  be  very  often,  I  pray  you  for  his  father's  sake  rebuke 
him."  1 

He  evidently  had  a  sympathetic  ear  for  love 
troubles.  Mary  Boleyn,  the  Queen's  sister  and  former 
mistress  of  the  King,  had  made  a  clandestine  marriage 
with  Sir  William  Stafford.  The  anger  of  the  King  and 
Queen  and  her  powerful  relatives  of  the  families  of 
Boleyn  and  Norfolk  was  great.  In  her  troubles  she 
writes  to  Cromwell,  saying  that  her  sister,  father,  brother 
and  uncle  are  so  "cruel  against  us"  she  dares  not  write  to 
them.  She  knows  that  her  marriage  displeases  the  King 
and  Queen,  "But  one  thing,  good  Master  Secretary,  con- 
sider :  that  he  was  young  and  love  overcame  reason.  And 
for  my  part,  I  saw  so  much  honesty  in  him  that  I  loved 
him  as  well  as  he  did  me;  and  was  in  bondage  and  glad 
I  was  to  be  at  liberty ;  so  that  for  my  part  I  saw  that  all 
the  world  did  set  so  little  by  me  and  he  so  much,  that  I 
thought  I  could  take  no  better  way  than  to  take  him  and 
forsake  all  other  ways  and  live  a  poor  honest  life  with 
him.  For  well  I  might  a  had  a  greater  man  of  birth 
and  a  higher,  but,  I  ensure  you,  I  could  never  a  had 
one  that  should  a  loved  me  so  well.  *  *  *  We  have 
been  now  a  quarter  of  a  year  married,  *  *  *  but  if 
I  were  at  liberty  and  might  choose,  I  ensure  you,  Master 
Secretary,  for  my  little  time  I  have  tried  so  much  honesty 
to  be  in  him,  that  I  had  rather  beg  my  bread  with  him 
than  to  be  the  greatest  Queen  christened."  And  she 
begs  Cromwell,  as  he  has  "the  name  of  helping  all  that 
need,"  that  he  will  help  them.2 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  VII,  153. 
•Ibid.,  VII,  1055. 


i66  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

At  least  one  other  pair  of  lovers  turned  to  him  for  help. 
An  unsigned  letter  has  survived,  thanking  Cromwell 
for  renewing  his  goodness  "in  writing  to  my  father  for 
us,  as  I  understand  by  my  dear  friend.  If  I  did  not  trust 
in  you,  I  would  soon  tire  of  life  to  find  my  father  no 
better  to  me  than  he  is.  My  mother,  that  was  wont  in 
such  matters  best  to  persuade  him,  being  taken  to  God's 
mercy.  *  *  *  As  he  whom  my  heart  resteth  upon 
regards  you  more  as  a  father  than  a  master,  I  will  ever 
as  one  body  with  him  bear  a  daughter's  affection  to  you. 
Your  Lordship's  most  bounden  handmaid."  * 

Almost  all  who  give  an  account  of  this  age  allude  to 
the  harsh  letter  Cromwell  wrote  to  the  Princess  Mary 
when  he  was  trying  to  induce  her  to  avoid  her  father's 
brutal  treatment  by  accepting  the  decrees  that  declared 
her  mother's  marriage  void — a  submission  which  brought 
her  the  Crown  of  England  by  her  father's  will.  The 
letter  was  hard,  but  Mary  came  to  feel  that  Cromwell 
had  stood  her  friend.  The  Spanish  Ambassador  reports : 
"The  King  has  been  all  the  time  furious  and  Cromwell 
himself  in  some  danger  of  his  life  *  *  *  owing  to 
his  having  shown  sympathy  for  the  Princess."  2  He  says 
that  after  Mary  submitted  to  her  father  Cromwell  paid 
his  respects  to  her,  begging  her  pardon  for  the  harsh 
terms  and  rude  conduct  of  his  former  visit.  "This  she 
was  glad  enough  to  grant,  knowing,  as  she  now  knows, 
Cromwell's  good  intentions  and  affection  toward  her,  and 
that  he  has  been,  and  still  is,  working  for  her  welfare  and 
the  settlement."  And  the  Duchess  of  Norfolk,  whom 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XII,  part  II,  Appendix,  26. 
•  Calendars,  Spanish,  V,  part  II,  pp.  184,  185. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  167 

her  husband  abandoned  for  another  woman,  wrote  to 
ask  Cromwell's  help,  "because  she  has  trust  in  him," 
having  heard  "how  good  he  was  to  the  King's  daughter 
in  her  trouble."  *  The  year  before  Cromwell's  death 
Mary  chose  him  "for  her  valentine,"  2  which  she  would 
hardly  have  done  if  she  had  felt  in  regard  to  his  conduct 
toward  her  as  many  modern  writers  have  felt. 

One  of  the  charges  in  his  attainder  was  that  he  had  set 
at  liberty  persons  convicted  of  misprision  of  treason  and 
others  suspected  of  treason.  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury, 
writing  three  generations  after  his  death,  says :  "He  was 
noted  in  the  exercise  of  judicature  to  have  used  much 
moderation."  And  the  French  Ambassador,  who  despised 
him  because  of  his  humble  birth  and  who  disliked  his 
policy,  wrote  just  before  his  fall:  "He  shows  himself 
willing  to  do  justice,  especially  to  foreigners."  3 

To  exalt  the  authority  of  the  King  as  the  incarnation 
of  common  law,  in  order  to  subdue  the  lawless  tendencies 
bred  by  feudalism,  was  the  least  difficult  thing  Cromwell 
helped  to  do.  In  that  he  only  had  to  finish  what  was 
begun  in  the  generation  before  he  came  to  power.  When 
he  undertook  to  free  England  from  connection  with  an 
Italianized  Papacy,  and  to  limit  the  political  power  of  the 
clergy,  he  began  a  task  harder  and  more  dangerous.  The 
Papacy  was  Italianized;  that  is  to  say  the  Popes  again 
and  again  sacrificed  the  spiritual  interest  of  Christendom 
to  Italian  politics  or  family  ambition.  When,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century,  three  Popes  claimed 
the  tiara,  and  the  strife  threatened  to  destroy  the  Church, 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  Vol.  XII,  part  II,  143. 
3  Ibid.,  XIV,  part  II,  page  329. 
*lbid.,  XV,  486. 


i68  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Christendom  had  met  in  the  Council  of  Constance,  de- 
posed all  three  Popes,  elected  another  by  a  conclave  where 
representatives  of  the  five  chief  nations  sat  with  the 
Cardinals,  decreed  that  the  supreme  power  of  the  Church 
was  in  a  General  Council,  not  in  the  Pope,  and  solemnly 
charged  the  new  Pope  with  the  duty  of  reforming  the 
Church  in  head  and  numbers,  reporting  as  a  responsible 
executive  to  regularly  assembled  Councils.  That  respon- 
sibility the  succeeding  popes  had  refused  to  acknowledge, 
that  duty  of  reform  they  had  failed  to  carry  out  in  a 
hundred  years.  This  is  no  longer  a  controverted  state- 
ment. It  is  conceded  by  the  ablest  Roman  Catholic  his- 
torians, and  its  truth  can  be  seen  with  unmistakable  plain- 
ness in  the  contemporary  writings  of  loyal  Churchmen. 
Such  a  strictly  orthodox  clergyman  and  obedient  Church- 
man as  Jacob  Wimpheling  (1450-1528)  has  left,  in  ser- 
mons and  writings,  not  only  unqualified  denunciations  of 
corruption  in  the  Church,  but  detailed  accounts  of  partic- 
ular scandalous  abuses.1 

One  thing  the  popes  since  Constance  had  done.  They 
had  ably  restored  the  temporal  power  of  the  Papacy  over 
the  States  of  the  Church.  This  task  had  absorbed  their 
energies.  And  it  lies  on  the  surface  of  lives  like  those 
of  Sixtus  IV,  Alexander  VI,  Julius  II,  Leo  X,  Clement 
VII,  that  they  had  little  enthusiasm  for  the  magnificent 
ideal  of  the  Pope  as  the  Vicar  of  Christ,  the  visible  repre- 
sentative of  the  justice  and  mercy  of  God.  They  used 
their  authority  as  spiritual  heads  of  Christendom,  and 
the  wealth  which  came  from  it,  largely  to  gratify  the 

1  See  Wiskawatoff,  Jacob  Wimpheling,  and  Histoire  Litteraire  de  la  Alsace — 
Charles  Schmidt. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  169 

ambitions  and  tastes  they  shared  with  other  princes  of  the 
Italian  Renascence. 

The  spectacle  of  this  corrupted  and  Italianized  Papacy 
had  been  denounced  again  and  again  by  Italian  writers  of 
all  shades  of  religious  opinion  from  Savonarola  to  Mach- 
iavelli.  The  world  north  of  the  Alps  had  long  watched  it 
with  an  impatience  foretelling  exasperation.  It  was 
taken  for  granted  by  most  intelligent  laymen  that  the 
Church  needed  a  thoroughgoing  reformation.  In  1495 
a  friend  of  the  Emperor  wrote  to  tell  him  of  the  presence 
of  the  King  of  France  in  Rome  and  of  his  own  fear 
that  the  King  will  reform  the  Church  "and  so  win  through 
all  Christendom  praise,  honor  and  reputation,  which,  on 
grounds  both  of  human  and  divine  right,  belongs  more  to 
your  Imperial  Majesty  than  to  him."  * 

As  a  result  of  this  condition  and  the  prevalent  opinion 
about  it,  the  general  loyalty  of  Christendom  to  the  splen- 
did ideal  of  the  Papacy,  which  had  stood  the  strain  of  so 
many  bitter  disappointments,  was  seriously  weakened. 
Biting  epigrams  were  circulating  through  the  world. 
Like  this  on  Alexander  VI,  who  had  been  elected  Pope 
by  notorious  bribery,  from  which  only  five  out  of  twenty- 
three  Cardinals  were  thought  to  have  been  free : 

"Vendit  Alexander  cruces,  altaria  Christi 
Vendere  jure  potest,  emerat  ille  prius." 
(Alexander  sells  Christ's  crosses  and  altars  for  pelf. 
He  has  a  right  to  sell  them — he  bought  them  first 

himself.) 
When  an  Imperial  Ambassador,  in  a  letter  which  ex- 

1  Chmel  Urkunden,  etc.,  zur  Geschichte,  Maximilian  I.  Stuttgart  lit.  Verein, 
VoL  X,  page  56. 


170 


RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 


presses  horror  at  the  iconoclasm  of  the  Lutherans,  writes 
that  some  of  the  Cardinals  have  "sneered  at  a  General 
Council  to  reform  the  Church,  and  offered  to  wager  ten 
to  one  it  will  never  take  place ;" *  when  another  Am- 
bassador writes  from  Rome  to  the  High  Commander  of 
Leon,  "since  Cardinals  sell  themselves  so  cheap,  your 
Lordship  ought  to  consider  that  it  would  be  impolitic  to 
defer  rewarding  those  who  are  our  friends,"  2  it  seemed 
to  some  minds  no  longer  a  question  of  a  theory  of  the 
Church,  but  of  an  impossible  situation. 

There  were  only  two  things  to  do:  make  another  at- 
tempt to  reform  the  Church,  and  secure  the  election  of  a 
Pontiff  with  spiritual  enthusiasm,  or  else  decide  that  the 
last  two  hundred  years  had  shown  the  ideal  of  the  Papacy 
to  be  unworkable,  abandon  it,  and  establish  a  series  of 
national  Churches,  appealing  for  justification  to  another 
Council  of  Christendom  as  really  representative  as  that 
of  Constance.  All  those  who  believed  that  the  "fullness 
of  power"  was  given  by  God  to  the  Pope,  stood  by  the 
ancient  ideal  for  conscience'  sake.  And  they  were 
joined  by  people  whose  conservative  temper  suggested 
the  fear  that  truth  would  perish  if  traditional  institutions 
were  destroyed.  On  the  other  hand,  men  whose  radical 
habits  of  thought  led  them  to  hope  that  truth  and  order 
would  survive  the  fall  of  ancient  institutions  to  create  new 
forms  of  expression  and  guarantees  of  law,  were  inclined 
to  destroy  the  one  remanent  universal  institution  of 
Christendom  as  no  longer  fitted  to  the  needs  of  the  world. 

A  feeling  common  to  those  classes  of  the  English  peo- 

1  Calendars,  Spanish  Papers,  IV,  part  I,  page  835, 
*  Ibid.,  IV,  part  II,  page  887. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  171 

pie  who  possessed  political  power  enabled  the  men  of 
radical  temper  to  sway  English  policy  on  the  question  of 
obedience  to  the  Pope.  There  was  a  growing  dislike  of 
foreign  interference  with  English  affairs,  rapidly  crystal- 
lizing around  the  throne  of  the  Tudors  into  the  national 
sentiment  which  was  to  be  the  background  of  the  great 
output  of  English  energy  under  Elizabeth.  The  feeling 
was  old  and  had  been  shown  before.  In  the  fourteenth 
century,  when  Wycliffe,  not  yet  guilty  of  the  crime  of 
heresy,  had  voiced  England's  refusal  of  Papal  tribute,  he 
had  been  the  hero  of  the  majority  of  Englishmen  who 
were  neither  priests  nor  monks.  When  Cromwell  came 
to  power,  five  generations  later,  this  dislike  of  foreign 
control  was  very  strong.  Circumstances  enabled  him  to 
evoke  and  shape  it  into  legislation. 

In  1527,  Henry  VIII  had  made  application  to  the  Papal 
Court  for  a  divorce  from  his  Queen,  Katherine,  widow  of 
his  older  brother  Arthur,  to  whom  he  had  been  married 
eighteen  years.  There  were  reasons  of  state  for  such  a 
divorce.  Henry  had  but  one  legitimate  child,  Mary.  No 
woman  had  ruled  England  except  Matilda,  four  hundred 
and  fifty  years  before.  And  her  reign  had  been  a  long 
anarchy,  ended  only  when  she  ceded  the  throne  to  her 
cousin  Stephen,  on  condition  that  at  his  death  her  son 
Henry  II  should  succeed.  Henry  VIII  might  well  have 
doubted  whether  any  woman  could  carry  on  the  policy  of 
the  Tudors,  for  it  was  impossible  to  foresee  the  strength 
of  that  loyalty  of  the  mass  of  the  nation  to  the  Tudor 
dynasty  as  the  guarantee  of  peace,  which  afterward  sus- 
tained the  repeatedly  shaken  thrones  of  Mary  and  Eliza- 
beth. And  in  addition,  only  the  single  life  of  a  delicate 


172  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

girl  stood  between  England  and  the  horrors  of  a  certain 
renewal  of  civil  war  over  a  disputed  succession. 

If  Henry  desired  to  avoid  this  danger  to  his  dynasty 
and  England,  he  must  obtain  from  the  Church  permis- 
sion to  put  away  his  wife  and  take  another  who  might 
bear  him  heirs.  He  believed  that  he  could  obtain  this 
from  the  Pope.  The  Church  maintained  in  theory  the 
noble  attitude  toward  the  sacredness  of  the  marriage  tie 
which  is  now  enforced  upon  the  adherents  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  communion.  But  the  unreformed  abuses  of 
the  administration  of  the  Curia  rendered  it  possible  for 
people  of  wealth  and  influence  to  obtain  facile  divorce. 
Henry's  brother-in-law,  the  Duke  of  Suffolk,  had  two 
living  wives  beside  the  King's  sister.  And  this  compli- 
cated matrimonial  situation  had  been  made  legal  by  Papal 
bulls  and  dispensations.1 

In  1528,  Henry's  sister  Margaret,  Queen  of  Scotland, 
obtained  a  divorce  from  the  Earl  of  Angus  on  such  flimsy 
grounds  that  Henry  bade  Wolsey  write  her  that  "the 
shameless  sentence  sent  from  Rome  plainly  discovereth 
how  unlawfully  it  was  handled,"  and  warn  her  of  the 
"inevitable  damnation  of  adulterers." 2  Twenty-nine 
years  before  the  Pope  had  granted  a  divorce,  which  Louis 
XII  of  France  asked  for  reasons  very  similar  to  those 
which  lay  behind  Henry's  request.  When  Louis  came 
to  the  throne  in  1498,  he  had  been  married  for  twenty-two 
years  to  Joan,  daughter  of  Louis  XI,  noted  for  her  good- 
ness and  the  dignity  of  her  character,  but  unattractive  and 
without  children.  Louis  wished  to  marry  Anne  of  Brit- 

1  Anne  Boleyn,  by   Paul   Friedmann.     Macmillan,   1884. 
*  Letters  and  Papers,  IV.  4131. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  173 

tany,  his  predecessor's  widow.  Strong  reasons  of  state 
as  well  as  inclination  suggested  the  match.  The  throne 
needed  direct  heirs,  and  marriage  with  the  Queen  Dow- 
ager would  keep  her  hereditary  Duchy  of  Brittany  closely 
bound  to  the  Crown  of  France.  The  Pope  appointed  a 
commission  which  granted  the  divorce,  with  his  approval. 
Louis  immediately  married  Anne  of  Brittany.  The  peo- 
ple resented  the  injustice  to  Queen  Joan  and  nicknamed 
the  three  commissioners  Caiaphas,  Herod  and  Pilate.1 
Henry  had  very  good  reason  to  expect  that  the  Pope 
would  enable  him  to  put  away  his  wife  in  order  to  take 
another.  In  his  application  for  divorce  he  chiefly  em- 
phasized spiritual  reasons.  He  said  that  the  French 
Ambassador,  while  conducting  negotiations  about  the 
marriage  of  the  Princess  Mary,  had  suggested  that  her 
title  to  succeed  to  the  English  throne  was  not  beyond 
question,  because  Henry's  marriage  to  Katherine,  his 
brother's  widow,  although  resting  on  special  Papal  dis- 
pensation, was  against  the  laws  of  the  Church  and  the 
Word  of  God.2  This  remark,  Henry  said,  had  produced 
increasing  torments  of  conscience  for  living  with  his 
brother's  widow,  in  disobedience  to  the  Word  of  God. 
The  intimates  of  the  English  Court  suspected,  with  good 
reason,  that  the  most  acute  motive  impelling  him  to  seek 
this  divorce  was  a  passion  for  one  of  the  Court  ladies, 
Anne  Boleyn,  a  woman  of  noble  blood  and  vulgar  nature, 
who  was  skillfully  dallying  with  Henry  in  order  to  be- 

1  De  Maulde  la  Clavitre  Procedures  Politiques  du  Regne  de  Louis  XII. 

1  Such  a  dispensation  to  marry  a  brother's  widow  was  not  unexampled.  Hein- 
rich  Deichsler  in  his  Chronicle  records  under  the  year  1489  that  a  Nuremburg 
patrician  married  three  brothers  in  succession,  sending  to  Rome  to  obtain  a  dis- 
pensation. Chroniken  der  deutschen  Stadte,  V,  352. 


174  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

come  Queen  of  England.  Self-indulgence  and  flattery 
had  bred  in  Henry  a  desperate  selfishness  and  the  temper 
of  a  tyrant.  It  is  a  Nemesis  for  these  sins  that  his  most 
active  motives,  which  were  generally  his  most  unworthy 
motives,  have  often  seemed  to  posterity  his  only  motives. 
The  facts,  however,  indicate  beyond  a  question  that 
Henry's  eagerness  to  marry  Anne  Boleyn  was  not  all 
passion,  but  partly  statecraft,  clearly  seeing  the  need  of 
male  heirs  to  the  throne.  When  her  power  over  him  was 
failing,  Anne  felt  that  the  birth  of  a  son  would  reinstate 
her  in  his  favor.  And  her  enemies  openly  rejoiced  as  soon 
as  it  became  known  that  her  child  was  a  girl. 

It  is  a  superficial  view  of  the  complicated  character  of 
Henry  and  the  subtle,  morbid  character  of  his  depravity, 
to  see  in  his  professions  of  torments  of  conscience  nothing 
but  bold,  conscious  hypocrisy.  French  literature  has 
made  us  familiar  with  the  type  of  woman  at  once  galante 
and  devote.  Henry's  conscience,  too  weak  to  control  his 
conduct,  was  acutely  sensitive.  He  thought  himself  to  be 
religious,  was  proud  of  his  training  in  theology,  and 
possessed  skill  as  a  casuist.  Whenever  he  did  a  bad 
thing,  he  usually  succeeded  in  persuading  himself  that  he 
had  a  good  motive  for  it. 

However  much  England  might  need  heirs  to  the  throne, 
the  divorce  was  a  most  blatant  injustice.  Since  an  indis- 
cretion of  her  youth,1  Katherine  had  lived  a  life  above 
reproach.  By  her  husband's  own  saying,  she  had  been  a 
most  patient  and  faithful  wife.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  the 
Papacy  that  Henry,  neither  by  bribes  nor  threats,  could 
induce  the  Curia  to  consent  to  the  divorce.  Clement  VII 

1  Calendar  of  State  Papers,  Spanish,  supplement  to  Vols.  I  and  II. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  175 

was  in  great  fear  of  Katherine's  nephew,  the  Emperor 
Charles  V,  whose  Spanish  and  Lutheran  regiments  in- 
flicted on  Rome  in  1527  a  frightful  sack,  in  which  all  the 
world,  whether  they  rejoiced  at  it  or  deplored  it,  saw  the 
punishment  for  the  sins  of  the  Curia.  But  it  is  unjust 
to  assume  that  fear  was  the  only  motive  for  refusal. 
Even  shifty  and  worldly  Clement  VII,  using  his  office 
of  Pope  chiefly  to  advance  his  family,  probably  shrank 
from  dishonoring  one  of  his  predecessors  and  disregard- 
ing the  appeal  of  a  wronged  woman  to  the  visible  judg- 
ment seat  of  Christ. 

When  Cromwell  began  in  in  the  middle  of  1532  to  ac- 
quire influence  in  the  Royal  Council,  he  found  the  King 
trying  to  force  the  Pope  to  grant  a  divorce  from  Kath- 
erine  that  would  enable  him  to  marry  Anne  Boleyn.  The 
fate  of  Wolsey  told  any  man  of  discernment  that  the 
necessary  condition  of  power  was  to  help  the  King  to 
get  what  he  wanted.  The  original  motives,  England's 
need  of  more  children  of  the  royal  blood,  and  the  inclina- 
tion of  passion  turned  by  self-deceiving  casuistry  into 
the  torments  of  conscience,  were  now  reinforced  by  the 
dominant  trait  of  Henry's  character.  That  habit,  called 
by  those  who  approve  of  the  objects  toward  which  it  is 
turned  strength  of  will,  by  those  who  disapprove  of  them 
obstinacy,  had  mastered  him.  Opposition  to  a  purpose 
made  him  more  bent  on  its  accomplishment.  Cavendish 
heard  the  dying  Wolsey  tell  Kingston,  the  lieutenant  of 
the  Tower :  "He  is  sure  a  prince  of  a  royal  courage  and 
hath  a  princely  heart,  and  rather  than  he  will  either  miss 
or  want  any  part  of  his  will  or  appetite,  he  will  put  the 
loss  of  one-half  his  realm  in  danger.  For  I  assure  you  I 


176  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

have  often  kneeled  before  him  in  his  privy  chamber  on  my 
knees  for  the  space  of  an  hour  or  two  to  persuade  him 
from  his  will  and  appetite,  but  I  could  never  bring  to  pass 
to  dissuade  him  therefrom."  Cromwell,  years  afterward, 
described  to  the  Spanish  Ambassador  how  "the  King's 
whole  Council  were  assembled  for  three  or  four  hours, 
and  there  was  not  one  of  them  but  remained  long  on  his 
knees  before  the  King,  to  beg  him  for  the  honor  of  God 
not  to  lose  so  good  an  opportunity  of  establishing  a 
friendship  so  necessary  and  advantageous,  but  they  had 
not  been  able  to  change  his  opinion."  * 

Only  one  thing  ever  made  Henry  give  way — the  clear 
perception  that  he  was  in  danger  of  destroying  that  con- 
sent of  the  English  middle  class  on  which  he  was  basing 
his  throne.  He  now  judged,  and  the  result  showed  he  was 
right,  that  the  openly  expressed  sympathy  of  large  num- 
bers of  the  people  for  Katherine  would  not  take  the  form 
of  an  irrepressible  rebellion  aiming  to  dethrone  him,  in 
order  to  prevent  her  from  being  uncrowned. 

Whether  Cromwell  felt  the  injustice  done  to  Katherine 
cannot  be  known.  If  he  did,  like  many  statesmen  of  his 
own  and  succeeding  generations,  he  was  not  capable  of  the 
moral  heroism  of  sacrificing  the  need  of  the  state  to  the 
rights  of  an  individual.  No  one  would  be  apt  to  feel 
more  strongly  England's  need  of  male  heirs  to  the  throne 
than  this  hater  of  disorder,  born  of  that  very  burgher 
class  to  which  the  Tudor  policy  appealed. 

He  also  saw  in  the  situation  an  opportunity  of  doing 
something  which  would  please  the  King,  and  at  the  same 
time  be,  from  his  point  of  view,  of  great  service  to  Eng- 

»  Letters  and  Papers,  X,  page  293. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  177 

land.  That  was  to  make  two  changes  in  the  English 
Church.  First,  to  remove  it  from  the  overlordship  of 
popes,  spending  the  money  they  drew  from  England  in 
wars  to  create  princedoms  for  their  relatives,  and,  second, 
to  destroy  the  independent  political  power  of  the  clergy. 
The  first  intent  was  finally  expressed  by  making  the 
Church  of  England  a  national  Church,  using  in  service 
the  vernacular  instead  of  the  universal  Latin,  constituting 
its  own  Primate,  without  the  authority  of  the  representa- 
tive of  Christendom.  The  second  intent  was  carried  out 
by  subjecting  the  clergy  to  the  efficient  control  of  the 
Crown. 

Before  Cromwell  attained  influence  in  the  Royal  Coun- 
cil, Henry  may  have  thought  of  revolting  from  the  tradi- 
tionally established  Papal  authority.  But  if  he  had 
thought  of  schism  from  the  body  of  Christendom,  he  had 
not  yet  determined  upon  it.  In  1531  he  had  compelled 
the  Convocations  of  the  English  clergy  to  acknowledge 
him  as  Supreme  Head  of  the  English  Church,  "so  far  as 
the  law  of  Christ  allows."  But  that  title  was  not  entirely 
new.  It  was  unpleasant  to  the  defenders  of  the  Papal 
"fullness  of  power,"  but  it  did  not  necessarily  imply  a 
denial  of  the  authority  of  the  Pope,  nor  was  its  assump- 
tion taken  by  the  Papacy  as  a  declaration  of  schism.  Prac- 
tically it  was  quite  consistent  with  a  method  of  ecclesias- 
tical management  which  the  Papacy  had  conceded  to 
nations  by  Concordats.  Henry  had  induced  Parliament 
to  vote  that  annates,  i.  e.,  the  whole  or  a  part  of  the  first 
year's  income  of  certain  ecclesiastical  offices,  paid  to  the 
Papacy  by  custom  which  had  become  law,  should  be  with- 
held. But  this  did  not  necessarily  imply  schism,  for  the 


178  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Pragmatic  Sanction  of  Bourges,  under  which  the  French 
Church  was  managed  from  1438  to  1516,  forbade,  under 
penalties,  the  payment  of  annates  to  the  Pope.  And  the 
English  act  against  annates  was  not  final.  It  would  only 
become  law  in  case  the  King  failed  to  come  to  an  agree- 
ment with  the  Pope.  Henry  sent  word  to  Clement  that 
the  usual  annates  would  be  paid  if  they  could  agree.  And 
Henry  and  Francis,  at  an  interview,  promised  to  stand 
together  to  force  the  Pope  to  do  what  each  wanted.  The 
Acts  of  Parliament  were  as  yet  only  threats  to  bring  the 
Pope  to  terms  with  the  King. 

But,  soon  after  Cromwell's  rise  to  great  influence  in 
the  Royal  Council,  this  policy  of  threats  and  pressure, 
which  had  often  been  tried  before  by  kings  who  had  no 
intention  of  seceding  permanently  from  the  Papal  obedi- 
ence, was  changed  for  a  policy  recently  used  by  some 
cantons  of  the  Swiss  Confederacy  and  some  princes  and 
free  cities  of  Germany.  The  English  nation  through 
its  constituted  heads  denied  the  right  of  the  Bishop  of 
Rome  to  exercise  any  jurisdiction  over  the  Church  of 
England. 

This  withdrawal  from  Papal  obedience  did  not  then 
imply  in  any  supporter  of  it  who  professed  willingness  to 
submit  to  a  general  council,  the  denial  of  the  traditional 
creeds.  It  was  many  generations  before  the  dogma  of 
the  infallibility  of  the  Pope  was  made  de  fide.  It  had 
been  most  strenuously  and  explicitly  denied,  at  some  time 
during  the  last  two  centuries,  by  each  of  the  leading  coun- 
tries of  Christendom.  Even  the  doctrine  of  the  Papal 
fullness  of  power,  the  theoretical  base  of  the  conception 
pf  the  Church  as  an  absolute  monarchy,  though  long 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  179 

asserted,  might  still  be  freely  attacked  on  canonical 
grounds.  At  no  time  since  the  earliest  suggestion  of  it 
had  the  idea  been  fully  accepted  by  all  Churchmen. 
And  in  the  early  fifteenth  century,  the  Council  of 
Constance,  the  most  widely  representative  assembly  of 
Christendom  ever  held,  expressly  denied  it,  and  asserted 
that  the  Pope  was  responsible  to  the  hierarchy  and  the 
representatives  of  the  nations  of  Christendom.  Schism 
was  a  sin,  but  it  did  not  become  heresy  unless  it  was  ac- 
companied by  the  refusal  to  submit  to  a  general  council  of 
the  Church.  Neither  was  the  idea  of  a  national  Church 
a  novelty  among  men  who  had  no  quarrel  with  dogma. 
For  example,  in  1495  when  Henry  VIII  was  yet  a  boy, 
and  long  before  Luther  and  other  organizers  of  heretical 
churches  had  appeared,  a  South  German  nobleman  wrote 
an  open  letter  to  the  Duke  of  Saxony,  suggesting  that  the 
political  intrigues  of  the  Pope  in  support  of  the  King  of 
France  would  be  sufficient  ground  for  the  Diet,  "because 
of  such  wickedness,  to  withdraw  obedience  for  a  time  from 
the  Pope,  and  set  up  in  the  place  of  the  Pope  a  national 
patriarch.1 

We  cannot  conclude,  therefore,  from  his  action  that 
Cromwell  had  adopted  at  this  time  any  of  the  new  theo- 
logical opinions.  As  a  patron  of  the  New  Learning  he 
probably  disliked  some  traditional  practices  like  pilgrim- 
age, the  veneration  of  relics  and  the  sale  of  indulgences. 
But  men  who  did  not  secede  from  the  Roman  Com- 
munion, men  like  Erasmus  and  More,  had  denounced  the 
abuses  which  had  gathered  round  those  pious  customs. 

1  Der  Traum  Hans  von  Herraansgrun.  Ulmann.  Forschungen  zur  deutschen 
geschichte,  XX,  page  187. 


i8o  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

The  mediaeval  ascetic  ideal  seemed  to  him,  as  it  did  to 
most  men  of  the  New  Learning,  to  fetter  the  human  spirit. 
But  those  most  active  servants  of  the  orthodox  creed  and 
the  traditional  Church  system,  the  Jesuits,  were  soon  to 
break  away  from  it.  His  conduct  is  not  sufficient  reason 
for  assuming  that  he  sympathized  with  the  new  theolog- 
ical opinions.  And  we  know  at  least  two  things  which 
indicate  plainly  a  lack  of  sympathy  with  heresy.  His 
will  made  in  1529  leaves  ten  marks  a  year,  equal  to  some 
three  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  "to  hire  a  priest  to  sing 
for  my  soul  for  seven  years."  *  And  in  May,  1530,  he 
wrote  to  Wolsey,  "the  fame  is  that  Luther  has  departed 
this  life.  I  would  he  had  never  been  born."  2 

As  to  the  question,  since  so  ingeniously  and  warmly 
debated,  whether  the  withdrawal  from  the  Roman  obe- 
dience was  a  schism,  or  the  lawful  assertion  of  the  rights 
of  the  English  Church  against  Papal  usurpation,  it  is  not 
probable  that  Cromwell  took  the  smallest  interest  in  it 
one  way  or  the  other.  When  a  thing  had  to  be  done,  he 
was  not  the  sort  of  man  to  care  much  what  it  was  to  be 
called.  Moreover,  his  mind  was  probably  little  affected 
by  ideals  of  the  Church.  The  intimate  friends  he  made 
in  his  days  of  obscurity,  and  kept  in  his  days  of  splendor, 
indicate  that  he  cared  for  the  things  of  the  soul  as  well 
as  for  those  of  the  mind;  but  he  was  a  lawyer,  not  a 
clergyman ;  a  politician,  not  an  ecclesiastic.  His  habitual 
mood  made  him  more  actively  interested  in  the  glory  of 
England  than  in  the  glory  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

In  addition,  he  seems  to  have  gravitated  by  natural  in- 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  IV,  5772. 
'.Ibid,,  IV,  6391. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  181 

clination  toward  an  opportunist  point  of  view.  His  per- 
ception that  something  ought  to  be  done  and  his  decision 
as  to  what  was  best  to  do,  were  not  apt  to  be  obscured  by 
theories.  Some  of  the  rulers  of  men  who  have  been  most 
useful  in  dealing  with  problems  of  politics  complicated  by 
hatred  arising  from  discussions  about  religion,  have  been 
subject  to  this  secular  temper  or  have  been  inclined  toward 
the  opportunist  view  point.  Under  Elizabeth,  England  es- 
caped the  dangers  of  feudal  reaction  and  civil  war  about 
religion  which  ruined  France  because  the  Valois  could  not 
master  them.  Under  Henry  IV,  who  thought  "Paris  worth 
a  mass,"  France  laid  down  the  torch  and  the  sword  for  the 
plough  and  the  loom.  And  it  seems  probable  that  the 
essential  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ  about  the  Father  in 
Heaven,  had  freer  course  under  the  opportunist  peace  of 
secular-minded  Elizabeth  and  Henry  than  amid  the  fa- 
natic hatred  of  the  Huguenot  wars.  But,  useful  as  these 
rulers  of  secular  mood  and  opportunist  temper  have  been 
in  times  of  intense  hatred  bred  by  differences  about  relig- 
ion, certain  minds  find  it  difficult  to  be  just  to  them. 
The  man  whose  strongest  emotions  turn  him  toward  the 
service  of  the  church,  is  only  too  prone  to  conclude  that 
he  who  in  times  of  religious  strife  looks  first  to  the  safety 
of  the  state,  must  be  an  infidel.  The  man  who  holds  that 
a  given  form  in  church  or  state  is  of  divine  origin,  thinks 
the  opportunist  must  have  no  ideal,  because  his  ideal  is 
not  definite.  And  the  conservative,  whose  reverence  for 
institutions  outweighs  his  hopes  of  progress,  is  always  apt 
to  accuse  the  radical  of  undermining  the  moral  founda- 
tions of  human  society.  This  was  the  attitude  of  Reg- 
inald Pole,  Cardinal  for  England.  He  denounced  Crom- 


182  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

well  as  an  incarnate  devil,  denying  the  very  distinction 
between  right  and  wrong.1 

But  no  mood  defends  a  ruler  against  the  temptations 
of  the  power  to  do  great  things.  If  the  patriot  is  tempted 
to  forget  God,  the  ecclesiastic  seems  to  be  tempted  to  hate 
man,  which,  according  to  John,  makes  him  unable  to  love 
God.  The  rule  of  ecstatically  and  sincerely  devout  Mary 
was  certainly  no  less  cruel  than  that  of  her  father.  And 
the  maxim,  "One  may  do  evil  that  good  may  come,"  has 
been  labeled  in  common  speech  as  having  belonged 
to  the  practice  of  Machiavellians  and  of  Jesuits. 
Cromwell  gained  power  by  helping  the  King  to  do  what 
he  wanted,  and,  like  almost  all  men  of  ability  in  politics, 
he  was  ambitious.  But  there  are  reasons  for  what  he  did, 
which  millions  of  her  people  of  his  own  and  succeeding 
generations  have  thought  to  be  connected  with  the  best 
good  of  England.  It  is  as  superfluous  to  accuse  him  of 
being  moved  only  by  the  base  ambitions  of  a  greedy  and 
flattering  adventurer,  as  it  would  be  to  assert  that  Pole, 
in  standing  by  the  Roman  obedience,  was  bribed  by  the 
red  robe  of  a  cardinal  and  the  income  equivalent  to 
$100,000  which  came  to  him  from  his  benefices.2 

For  his  plan  of  breaking  from  the  Papacy,  Cromwell 
could  count  on  no  assistance  from  the  higher  clergy,  a 
body  very  distinct  from  the  parish  priests.  It  is  true  that 
only  three  of  the  twenty-six  English  bishops  were  now 
absentee  Italians.  But  many  English  bishops,  abbots 
and  members  of  the  cathedral  chapters,  believed  that  the 
Pope's  authority  was  given  by  God.  All  preferred  it  to 

1  Apologia  ad  Carolum  Quintum. 

•  Philip's  Life  of  Pole,  Vol.  II,  page  294, 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  183 

the  rule  of  the  laity.  Both  these  grounds  of  scruple 
were  expressed  in  the  protest  of  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, Primate  of  the  Church,  that  no  concessions  made 
by  Convocation  were  to  be  understood  as  implying  any 
restriction  of  the  power  of  the  Roman  Pontificate,  or  any 
infringement  upon  the  liberties  of  the  Province  of  Canter- 
bury. And  many  things  indicate  that  the  clergy  gave  a 
grudging  assent  to  the  revolt  from  the  Papal  authority, 
which  left  them  without  shelter  against  the  power  of  the 
King. 

This  reluctance  of  the  clergy  to  submit  on  equal  terms 
with  the  laity  to  the  control  of  the  laws,  was  one  of  the 
strongest  reasons  why  Cromwell  thought  it  best  for  Eng- 
land to  separate  from  Rome.  And  the  control  of  the 
lav/s  meant  to  him  the  control  of  the  King,  the  guarantee 
of  peace  and  order,  the  symbol  and  defender  of  the  nation. 
American  ecclesiastical  establishments  are  entirely  volun- 
tary, they  have  almost  no  endowments,  and  this  puts 
them  so  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  laity  whenever  they 
choose  to  use  their  power,  that  it  is  difficult  for  an  Ameri- 
can to  appreciate  the  situation  in  England  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  clergy  were  a  corpo- 
rate body,  freed  from  the  ordinary  jurisdiction  of  the 
common  law,  deciding  matters  connected  with  marriage 
and  wills  by  courts  constituted  by  themselves,  having 
sanctuaries  where  the  criminal  who  entered  was  free  from 
arrest,  enjoying  an  income  two  and  a  half  times  that  of 
the  Crown,  owning  real  estate  estimated  at  one-third  the 
total  of  the  kingdom,  casting  in  the  persons  of  the  twenty- 
six  bishops  and  the  twenty-seven  mitred  abbots  almost 
two-thirds  of  the  votes  in  Henry  VIII's  first  House  of 


184  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Lords,  and  able  as  great  landed  proprietors  to  exert  in- 
fluence on  elections  to  the  House  of  Commons.  And  this 
formidable  body  confessed  supreme  allegiance  to  a  ruler 
living  in  Rome  whose  predecessors  had  repeatedly  claimed 
the  divine  and  unquestionable  right  to  dictate  to  kings 
and  nations  about  the  conduct  of  their  affairs. 

A  corporation  legally  so  independent  and  politically  so 
powerful  would  not  be  suffered  to  exist  in  any  modern 
state.  Large  numbers  of  men  of  all  shades  of  religious 
opinion,  thought  this  temporal  power  and  political  inde- 
pendence of  the  clergy,  appealing  to  the  irresponsible 
divine  authority  of  the  Pope,  to  be  injurious  both  to 
Church  and  State.  The  same  attitude  under  modern 
conditions  has  been  taken  in  our  own  day  by  the  Roman 
Catholic  people  of  Italy.  They  have  felt  it  to  be  intolera- 
ble that  an  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  independent  of  the 
laws  of  Italy  should  exist  at  Rome.  Henry  VIII  ex- 
pressed the  views  of  numbers  of  statesmen  in  all  coun- 
tries of  Europe,  when  he  wrote  to  James  of  Scotland: 
"What  more  intolerable  calamity  may  there  be  to  a  Chris- 
tian prince  than  unjustly  to  be  defeated  of  the  righteous 
jurisdiction  within  his  own  realm,  to  be  a  king  by  name, 
but  not  in  deed?  To  be  a  ruler  without  regiment  over 
his  own  liege  people  ?" 

Cromwell,  a  man  of  the  Renascence,  who  had  thrown 
off  mediaeval  ideals,  was  trying  to  form  out  of  England 
a  modern  state,  by  that  process  of  unification  under  an 
absolute  throne  through  which  all  the  states  of  Europe 
which  early  achieved  nationality  passed.  He  wanted, 
therefore,  to  make  the  King  the  efficient  head  of  the 
Church.  He  determined  to  loose  upon  the  clergy  the 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  185 

dislike  of  their  independence  and  the  jealousy  of  their 
power  felt  by  a  part  of  the  people  of  England. 

Unmistakable  instances  of  this  feeling  appear  in  con- 
temporary writings.  In  1514  Richard  Hunne  was  ar- 
rested for  heresy.  In  reply,  he  brought  a  criminal  charge 
against  the  clergy  who  accused  him.  He  was  found 
hanging  in  his  cell  in  the  ecclesiastical  prison,  and  the 
Chancellor  of  the  Bishop  was  accused  of  murdering  him. 
The  Bishop  wrote  to  Wolsey,  asking  that  the  prisoner 
might  be  tried  by  a  commission  of  the  Royal  Council. 
"Assured  am  I  that  if  my  Chancellor  be  tryed  by  any 
twelve  men  in  London,  they  be  so  maliciously  set  in 
favour  of  heresy  that  they  will  condemn  my  clerk  though 
he  be  as  innocent  as  Abel."  *  A  popular  pamphlet  of 
1527,  in  the  form  of  a  petition  to  the  King  reciting  the 
abuses  of  the  clergy,  asks  rhetorically :  "What  remedy  ? 
Make  laws  against  them  ?  Are  they  not  stronger  in  your 
own  Parliament  house  than  yourself?  What  law  can  be 
made  so  strong  against  them  that  they,  either  with  money 
or  else  with  policy,  will  not  break  or  set  it  at  naught  ?"  z 

On  the  8th  of  November,  1529,  the  Imperial  Ambassa- 
dor writes:  "Sure  as  I  am  that  your  Imperial  Majesty 
does  not  care  for  mere  speculation  as  to  the  future,  which 
after  all  is  an  art  for  which  I  am  not  at  all  fitted,  I  will 
not  venture  upon  predictions.  *  *  *  Respecting  the 
clergy  of  this  kingdom  I  may  say,  without  having  re- 
course to  the  said  art  of  divination,  that  they  will  be  for 
certain  both  punished  and  reformed,  fined  and  mulcted: 
for  they  are  generally  very  rich,  from  which  circumstance 

1  Hall's  Chronicle,  page  579. 
*  Supplication  for  Beggars. 


186  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

and  hatred  of  the  Cardinal  (Wolsey)  they  are  an  object 
of  envy  to  the  nobles  and  commoners  of  this  country."  * 
A  month  later  he  writes  that  the  reform  of  the  clergy  will 
be  pushed:  "First  in  the  hope  of  plunder  by  sale  of 
Church  property,  second  because  they  hope  by  antagoniz- 
ing the  clergy  to  persuade  the  people  to  consent  to  this 
marriage,  because  nearly  all  the  people  here  hate  the 
priests."  2 

This  dislike  of  the  wealth  and  power  of  the  clergy, 
had  been  expressed  in  laws  before  Cromwell  gained 
great  influence.3  In  1529  Parliament  had  passed  an  act 
about  the  oppressions  and  exactions  of  the  ecclesias- 
tical courts  in  the  probate  of  wills,  which,  in  spite  of 
promises,  "be  nothing  reformed  or  amended,  but  greatly 
augmented  and  increased  against  right  and  justice 
and  to  the  great  impoverishment  of  the  King's  sub- 
jects." 4  It  had  also  been  enacted,  for  the  increase  of 
"devotion  and  good  opinion  of  the  laity  toward  spiritual 
persons,"  that  no  spiritual  persons  "should  farm  or  buy 
or  sell  for  lucre;"  and  that  an  ordinary  priest  might  not 
hold  more  than  one  "benefice  with  cure  of  souls,"  and 
must  live  in  the  place  where  his  duty  as  a  pastor  was.6 
A  third  act  had  been  aimed  at  what  the  anti-clerical  chron- 
icler Hall  calls  "the  great  polling  and  extreme  exaction 
which  spiritual  men  used  in  taking  corpse  presents  or 

1  Calendars,  Spanish,  IV,  part  I,  page  325. 
» Ibid.,  IV,  part  I,  367. 

*  Mr.   I,ea  has  pointed  out  that  the  cahiers  of  the  Spanish  Cortes  for  two 
hundred  years  show  a  similar  dislike  of  the  Spanish  people,  caused  by  clerical 
privileges  before  the  law  and  jurisdiction  over  civil  matters.     Camb.  Hist.  Refor- 
mation, page  675. 

«  Revised  Statutes,  I,  247. 

•  Statutes  of  the  Realm,  III,  292. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  187 

mortuaries,  for  the  children  of  the  defunct  should  all  die 
of  hunger,  go  a-begging  rather  than  they  would  of  charity 
give  to  them  the  silly  (simple)  cow  which  the  dead  man 
ought,  (owed  to  the  priest)  if  he  had  only  one." 

Cromwell,  from  his  first  entry  into  the  Royal  Council, 
appears  to  have  been  anxious  to  express  this  feeling 
against  the  clergy  in  the  form  of  a  general  attack  upon 
the  clerical  abuses  under  which  many  of  the  laity  groaned. 
This  was  finally  done  in  the  form  of  a  petition  of  the 
Commons  against  the  Ordinaries  (judges  of  the  spiritual 
courts),  presented  to  the  King  i8th  of  March,  1532. 
Hall  says  the  petition  was  presented  after  a  long  debate 
over  "the  griefs  of  temporal  men  caused  by  exactions  of 
the  spirituality."  Four  drafts  of  this  "Book  against  the 
Clergy''  are  among  the  English  records.  Two  are  written 
in  the  hand  of  Cromwell's  chief  clerk;  two  in  a  strange 
hand ;  three  of  them  are  corrected  and  interlined  in  Crom- 
well's hand.1  Hence  several  writers  on  the  period  conclude 
that  Cromwell  was  the  author.  It  is  not  improbable.  He 
was  one  of  those  London  citizens  among  whom  the  feeling 
against  the  clergy  was  exceedingly  strong.  He  had  done 
business  for  many  of  them  and  they  knew  his  capacity. 
He  understood  the  clergy  from  his  relations  to  Wolsey. 
Whether  this  complaint  against  the  clergy  originated 
among  the  representatives  of  London,  or,  as  was  often  the 
case  with  petitions,  was  sent  down  by  the  Crown,  it  may 
easily  be  true  that  Cromwell  was  asked  to  write  or  revise 
it.  The  recently  made  suggestion  that  he  artificially  cre- 
ated the  discontent  it  expressed,  is  a  conclusion  not  only 
superfluous  but  against  the  facts.  There  is  abundant  reason 

1  Life  and  Letters  of  Thomas  Cromwell,  Roger  B.  Merriman. 


i88  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

to  believe  that  the  majority  of  those  English  citizens 
who  possessed  political  influence,  felt  what  Sir  William 
Fairfax  wrote  to  Cromwell :  "There  will  never  be  peace 
in  England  so  long  as  spiritual  men  have  so  much  tem- 
poral power." * 

It  is  more  than  probable  that  Cromwell  was  the  framer 
of  a  series  of  Acts  of  Parliament  which  did  four  things — 
defended  the  Crown  against  wars  over  the  succession, 
cut  England  from  the  Papacy,  stripped  the  clergy  of 
wealth  and  political  power  and  subjected  them  to  the 
King,  conferred  upon  the  Crown  powers  finally  rising  al- 
most to  summary  court-martial  to  meet  the  attempt  of 
Papal  Curia  to  force  England  back  to  obedience.  The 
vigor  and  unity  of  this  legislation,  and  the  skill  and  energy 
of  its  administration,  indicate  a  single  mind  at  the  centre. 
The  contrast  between  the  eight  years  of  Cromwell's 
power  and  the  years  which  preceded  and  followed  them, 
strongly  suggests  him  as  the  author  of  this  policy;  sub- 
ject always  to  the  powerful  will,  the  tyrannous  temper, 
the  selfish  impulses  and  the  exceedingly  able  judgment 
of  Henry. 

To  accomplish  this  fourfold  purpose  Cromwell 
used  Parliament.  Henry  had  consulted  Parliament 
comparatively  little  before  Cromwell  came  to  power. 
During  the  first  twenty  years  of  his  reign  statutes  were 
passed  only  in  eight.  Wolsey  feared  or  disliked  Parlia- 
ment. It  met  once  between  1515  and  1529,  and  was  soon 
dissolved  after  a  reluctant  grant  of  money.  On  the  con- 
trary, there  was  legislation  during  six  out  of  the  eight 

1  Letters  and  Papers.  XII,  part  I,  192. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  189 

years  of  Cromwell's  power,  and  the  laws  passed  during 
his  administration  fill  nearly  forty  per  cent,  of  the  pages 
which  record  the  legislation  of  the  thirty-eight  years  of 
Henry's  reign.  It  must  be  remembered,  of  course,  that 
the  Parliament  of  Henry  VIII  was  not  the  Parliament  of 
to-day.  Very  few  writers  on  Henry  VIII's  reign  for 
the  last  twenty  years  permit  their  readers  to  forget  that. 
We  are  told  repeatedly  that  it  was  a  "packed"  House  of 
Commons.  So  it  was.  One  of  the  complaints  of  the 
Northern  insurgents  of  1536  was  that  "Parliaments  ought 
to  have  knights  of  the  shire  and  burgesses  at  their  own 
election,  not  such  men  as  the  King  will  appoint."  *  But 
the  reign  of  Henry  VIII  was  not  the  only  time  when  the 
members  of  Parliament  did  not  represent  the  free  choice 
of  large  numbers  of  the  English  people.  The  House  of 
Commons  was  chosen  under  greater  or  less  pressure  from 
the  Crown  or  the  territorial  aristocracy  down  to  the  nine- 
teenth century.  An  over  emphasis  on  Cromwell's  activ- 
ity in  elections,  as  if  his  conduct  had  been  uniquely  tyran- 
nous, may  easily  produce  a  false  impression.  The  facts 
are  these:  He  was  in  power  during  two  general  elec- 
tions. Concerning  those  elections  there  have  survived 
two  electioneering  reports,  one  from  the  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk,2 the  other  from  the  Earl  of  Southampton,3  and  let- 
ters in  regard  to  six  elections.4  These  letters  and  reports 
show  that  divergent  opinion  was  not  entirely  suppressed 
for  there  was  opposition  to  the  Court  candidate  in  at  least 
three  places,  and,  with  one  exception,  the  often  quoted 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XI,  1244. 

*Ibid.,  XIV,  part  I,  800. 

1  Ibid.,  XIV,  part  I,  page  224. 

*  Compare  Ibid.,  X,  903;  XIV,  564,  598,  672,  695,  706,  and  others. 


190  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

case  of  the  Canterbury  election,  they  could  be  duplicated 
again  and  again  in  the  election  correspondence  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.  And  even  the 
Canterbury  election  is  not  unparalleled  for  the  next  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years. 

Cromwell  did  his  best  to  fill  Parliament  with  the  King's 
friends.  It  was  not  too  difficult  a  task  for  he  was  able  to 
find  a  large  body  of  King's  friends  to  choose  from.  And 
members  opposed  to  the  royal  policy  could  be  to  a  large 
extent  controlled.  For  a  century  and  a  half  later,  strong 
opposition  to  the  Crown  was  dangerous.  And  it  was  much 
more  dangerous  in  the  sixteenth  than  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  Wolsey  had  told  the  citizens  of  London  that  to 
oppose  the  royal  loan  might  "fortune  to  cost  some  their 
heads."  The  policy  of  suppressing  opposition  in  the 
councils  of  the  nation  by  fear,  was  freely  used  by  Crom- 
well's opponents.  A  single  example  will  make  this  plain. 
Cromwell  disliked  the  Bill  of  Six  Articles.  The  ap- 
proval of  Henry  for  it  marked  the  rising  influence  of  that 
alliance  between  his  deadly  enemies,  Gardiner,  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  and  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  which  was  to 
bring  him  to  the  scaffold.  When  it  came  down  from 
the  Lords,  he  sent  a  message  to  his  friends  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  "that  if  any  man  should  stand  against  the 
bill  earnestly  the  same  should  put  himself  in  great  danger 
of  his  life."  Thomas  Brook,  Alderman  of  Calais,  spoke 
against  it,  and  Cromwell  sent  a  personal  message  to  him 
telling  him  as  he  loved  his  life  not  to  speak  against  the 
bill.  Brook  continued  his  opposition,  and  Cromwell,  meet- 
ing him  afterward,  said,  "he  never  knew  man  to  play  so 
desperate  a  part  as  to  speak  against  that  bill,  unless  he 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  191 

made  a  reckoning  to  be  either  hanged  or  burned;  but 
God,"  said  he,  "hath  mightily  preserved  thee,  whereof 
I  am  glad."  On  his  return  to  Calais,  Brook  was  arrested 
for  heresy,  as  Kingston,  the  lieutenant  of  the  Tower,  had 
threatened  in  open  Parliament.  He  would  undoubtedly 
have  perished  but  for  his  bold  and  skillful  defense  and 
an  order  from  Cromwell  that  he  should  be  sent  to  Lon- 
don for  examination.1  Cromwell  had  no  objections  to 
this  pressure  upon  electors  and  members,  common  then 
and,  by  other  methods,  for  generations  afterward ;  except 
that  he  did  not  want  it  successfully  used  by  his  opponents. 

But  the  conclusion  that  such  unscrupulous  terrorizing 
of  opponents  reduced  Parliament  to  a  negligible  quantity 
is  mistaken.  Even  under  Henry  VIII  packing  and  con- 
trolling Parliament  had  its  limits.  Bills  supported  by 
the  Crown  were  withdrawn  and  amended,  and  Henry 
found  there  were  things  he  could  not  do. 

That  Cromwell,  when  it  was  necessary,  tried  to  force 
Parliament  to  do  what  the  King  wanted  done  is  not  so 
much  a  thing  that  can  be  proved,  as  a  conjecture  sup- 
ported by  scattered  facts  and  strongly  suggested  by  proba- 
ble inference  from  the  political  opinions  which  must  have 
underlaid  his  policy  as  Chief  Minister  of  the  Crown. 
The  modern  ideals  of  Parliamentary  government  were 
unknown.  To  the  Lancastrian  constitutionalism  which 
had  worked  so  badly  in  the  fifteenth  century,2  Cromwell 

1  Catley's  Poxe's  Book  of  Martyrs,  Vol.  V,  502-519.  This  narrative  finds 
support  in  the  Letters  and  Papers,  and  Foxe  could  easily  have  known  about  it. 
Foxe  is  a  strong  partisan.  It  has  been  shown  that  he  is  inaccurate  in  some 
instances.  But  the  present  habit  of  disbelieving  everything  he  says  for  no  par- 
ticular reason  except  that  he  says  it,  is  not  judicious. 

3  It  will  be  sufficient  to  cite  the  opinion  of  Stubb's  Constitutional  History, 
Chap.  XVIII,  sections  363-373. 


192  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

preferred  a  Crown  as  powerful  as  possible.  He  believed 
that  the  will  of  the  King  was  the  best  safeguard  for  the 
interests  of  the  nation.  But  the  nature  of  the  absolutism 
he  promoted  ought  not  to  be  overlooked.  The  Tudor 
absolutism  crushed  opposition  ruthlessly,  but  while  break- 
ing the  two  chief  pillars  of  the  mediaeval  state,  the  nobil- 
ity and  the  clergy,  it  was  forced  to  find  a  base  in  the 
national  consent.  The  potential  of  liberty  destroyed  un- 
der Hapsburg,  Valois  and  Bourbon  increased  under 
Henry  VIII  and  his  children.  "The  House  of  Commons, 
down  to  the  electoral  reforms  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
was  the  House  as  they  created  it."  They  added  or  re- 
vived about  ninety  boroughs  and  the  twelve  shires  of 
Wales,  nearly  doubling  the  strength  of  the  lower  House.1 
Cromwell  used  the  royal  power  to  flatter  or  dragoon 
members  of  Parliament,  but  he  appealed,  by  printing  press, 
pulpit  and  in  Parliament,  to  national  support  for  his  bold 
policy,  and  the  result  shows  that  he  must  have  obtained 
it.  No  English  King  was  ever  threatened  by  greater 
dangers  than  those  Henry  incurred  in  1533  and  1534. 
He  had  no  standing  army,  and  was  obliged  to  depend  for 
defense  on  the  levies  raised  by  commissions  issued  to  loyal 
gentlemen.  His  regular  expenses  were  exceeding  the 
Crown  income.  No  one  could  say  of  him  as  was  said  of 
the  King  of  France  that  he  could  tax  "as  much  as  he 
pleased."  Wolsey's  experience  with  the  Amicable  Loan 
had  warned  him  not  to  repeat  the  experiment  of  heavy 
taxation  without  grant  of  Parliament.  A  throne  cannot 
rest  on  nothing.  If  the  mass  of  the  nation  did  not  sup- 
port Henry's  throne,  why  did  it  not  fall  ? 

»Poole's  Atlas,  Vol.  II.  Map  XXIII. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  193 

•  Nor  was  Henry  trying  to  disarm  his  people  and  reduce 
them  to  the  helplessness  of  the  peasants  who  were  slaugh- 
tered by  the  nobles  in  the  French  Jacquerie,  or  massacred 
by  the  princes  in  the  German  peasant  revolt.  Legislation 
five  times  repeated  forbade  the  use  of  the  crossbow  and 
the  hand  gun,  those  facile  but  as  yet  less  efficient  foreign 
weapons  which  were  causing  the  "decay  of  the  ancient 
artillery  of  England."  *  Every  man  between  seventeen 
and  sixty  must  keep  a  bow  and  shoot  regularly  at  the 
butts.  He  was  forbidden  to  practice  at  less  than  two 
hundred  yards.  For  every  boy  between  seven  and  sev- 
enteen his  parents  must  provide  a  bow  of  elm  or  hazel. 
And  bows  must  be  sold  cheap  that  every  one  might 
buy.2 

It  was  not  by  overriding  the  feelings  of  the  mass  of 
Englishmen  who  had  political  power  that  the  ends  of  the 
Crown  under  Henry  VIII  were  accomplished.  It  was  by 
using  and  directing  them. 

Events  gave  Cromwell  opportunity  to  move  toward  the 
accomplishment  of  his  purpose. 

February  22,  1533,  the  Pope  confirmed  the  election  of 
Thomas  Cranmer  as  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Primate 
of  England,  to  succeed  Warham.  In  May  the  new  Arch- 
bishop secretly  cited  the  King  to  answer  a  charge  of  liv- 
ing unlawfully  with  his  brother's  wife,  and  declared  his 
marriage  to  Katherine  null  and  void.  He  followed  the 
sentence  by  the  declaration  that  the  King's  marriage  to 
Anne  Boleyn,  privately  celebrated  four  months  before, 

1  Tract  on  Decaye  of  England.  In  1541,  when  guns  had  improved,  every 
inhabitant  of  a  city,  borough  or  market  town  was  expressly  freed  from  this 
prohibition,  allowed  to  keep  a  long  gun  and  practice  at  a  mark. 

^.Statutes  of  the  Realm;  also  St.  Paul's  Magaeine,  Vol.  V,  page  330. 


194  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

was  lawful.  On  June  ist,  Anne  was  crowned  Queen  in 
Westminster  Hall  with  great  splendor.  This  whole  pro- 
cedure had  been  planned  by  the  Crown,  and  was  defended 
beforehand  by  an  act  of  Parliament,  passed  in  February, 
prohibiting  "appeals  to  Rome  in  causes  of  matrimony,  di- 
vorce, etc."  The  Pope  answered  by  a  sentence  declaring 
the  marriage  to  Anne  null  and  her  children  illegitimate, 
and  threatening  the  King  with  excommunication  unless 
he  repudiated  her  and  took  back  Katherine  (July  n, 

I533)-1 
Henry  made  every  preparation  to  meet  the  threatened 

excommunication  and  defend  the  succession  to  the  throne. 
He  tried  vainly  to  persuade  the  obstinately  honest  Kath- 
erine to  withdraw  her  appeal  to  Rome,  offering,  if  she 
did  so,  to  recognize  Mary's  right  to  succeed  to  the  Crown 
in  case  he  left  no  children  by  Anne  Boleyn.  Then  he  ap- 
pealed in  the  ancient  formula,  "from  the  Pope  ill  informed 
to  the  Pope  better  informed,"  and  a  pamphlet  appeared 
containing  an  "address  from  the  King's  Council  to  the 
residue  of  his  loving  subjects."  It  exhorted  them  to  "de- 
spise the  Pope"  and  stand  by  a  marriage  which  "sets  this 
realm  in  the  way  of  true  heirs."  The  Parliament  ses- 
sions of  1534  and  1535  produced  the  legislation  neces- 
sary to  carrying  out  the  intentions  of  the  Government. 
It  was  contained  in  several  bills  which  may  be  grouped 
with  two  chief  acts,  Of  Succession,  and  Of  Supremacy. 
Succeeding  supplementary  acts  fell  under  the  same  heads. 
The  Act  of  Succession,  "calling  to  remembrance  the 
great  divisions  which  in  time  past  hath  been  in  the  realm 
by  reason  of  several  titles  pretended  to  the  Crown  of  the 

1  Pococke,  Records  of  the  Divorce,  II,  App.  677. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  195 

same  .  .  .  whereof  hath  ensued  great  destruction  of 
man's  blood,"  declared  the  issue  of  Henry  and  Anne  heirs 
to  the  Crown,  adjudged  the  penalty  of  treason  to  any  one 
obstinately  and  maliciously  impugning  their  right,  and 
required  an  oath  from  every  subject  to  keep  the  whole 
contents  of  this  act.  A  refusal  of  the  oath  was  equivalent 
to  a  denial  of  the  act.1 

The  Act  of  Supremacy,  repudiating  the  authority  of 
the  laws  of  any  foreign  prince,  potentate  or  prelate,  made 
the  King  Supreme  Head  of  the  Church  of  England.  The 
clergy  might  pass  no  canons  without  his  assent.  He  was 
authorized  to  appoint  a  commission  of  thirty-two,  sixteen 
clergymen  and  sixteen  lay  members  of  Parliament,  to 
revise  or  repeal  existing  canons  with  their  help  and  ad- 
vice. From  these  two  groups  of  acts  concerning  the  Suc- 
cession and  the  Headship  of  the  Church,  the  threads  of 
Cromwell's  legislation  and  administration  lead  out  to  the 
accomplishment  of  his  fourfold  purpose — to  avoid  the 
danger  of  civil  war  over  the  Crown,  break  with  Rome, 
destroy  the  political  power  of  the  clergy,  and  defend  what 
was  done. 

For  it  needed  defense.  There  were  in  England  men 
whose  devotion  to  the  ancient  ways  would  not  permit 
them  to  see  the  power  of  the  clergy  and  obedience  to  the 
Pope  destroyed  without  a  struggle.  On  Easter,  1532, 
Peto,  a  friar  of  the  Franciscan  Observant  Monastery  at 
Greenwich,  was  invited  to  preach  before  the  King.  He 
denounced  the  marriage  with  Anne  and  warned  Henry 
to  repent  lest  he  receive  the  punishment  of  Ahab,  whose 
blood  was  licked  up  by  dogs.  When  the  preacher  was 

1  Statutes  of  the  Realm, 


196  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

answering  Peto,  the  next  Sunday,  two  friars  interrupted 
the  sermon  by  denouncing  him  as  one  of  "the  four  hun- 
dred prophets  into  whom  the  spirit  of  lying  has  entered, 
seeking  to  establish  the  succession  of  adultery."  *  Peto 
and  one  of  his  supporters  were  reprimanded  and  sent  out 
of  England.  About  a  year  later  the  Warden  of  a  Fran- 
ciscan convent  in  Southampton  preached  in  defense  of  the 
Papal  authority,  exhorting  the  people  to  stand  and  suf- 
fer martyrdom  for  it.  Cromwell  had  him  brought  to 
London  for  examination,  and  then  sent  him  back  to  his 
convent. 

In  1533  many  of  the  clergy,  in  the  pulpit  and  the 
confessional,  denounced  the  King's  marriage  and  the  de- 
nial of  the  Papal  authority.  The  most  effective  of  these 
appeals  to  popular  sympathy  for  Katherine  and  devo- 
tion to  the  Pope,  was  made  by  the  Holy  Maid  of  Kent,  a 
nun  who  for  many  years  had  great  influence  because  of 
her  visions  and  miracles.  She  was  thought  to  be  con- 
nected in  some  way  with  a  letter  from  heaven  written 
by  Mary  Magdalen  to  a  widow  in  London,  with  Jesus, 
Maria,  in  gold  letters  at  its  head.  And  those  associated 
with  her  related,  among  other  things,  how  the  devil,  when 
she  resisted  his  temptations,  had  spat  in  her  face,  and  that 
she  showed  the  napkin  with  which  she  wiped  it,  "black 
and  stinking,"  to  her  confessor.2  She  prophesied  that 
the  King  would  in  a  short  time  lose  his  kingdom,  and 
said  she  had  "seen  the  place  prepared  for  him  in  hell."  s 
She,  two  monks,  two  friars  and  two  priests,  accused  of 

iHarpsfield    (1519-1575),    The   Pretended  Divorce,   etc.,   page   202,    Camden 
Soc.,  1878;  also  Stow's  Annals. 
1  Letters  and  Papers,  VII,  72. 
'Ibid.,  VI,  1419. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  197 

having  circulated  her  prophecies,  were  attainted  of  treason 
by  Parliament  and  executed  in  May,  1534.  On  the  scaf- 
fold the  two  friars  were  offered  their  lives  if  they  would 
acknowledge  the  Act  of  Supremacy  The  nun  had  pub- 
licly confessed,  in  the  presence  of  the  others,  that  she  had 
deceived  the  people  by  false  miracles.  This  confession  may 
have  been  made  in  the  hope  of  saving  her  life.  But  one 
of  those  who  died  with  her  sent  word  to  Cromwell  that 
he  had  been  "miserably  deceived  by  that  false  and  dis- 
sembling woman." 1  And  Sir  Thomas  More  wrote : 
"Cromwell  has  done  a  very  meritorious  deed  in  bringing 
to  light  such  detestable  hypocrisy,  so  that  others  may  take 
warning  and  be  afraid  to  set  forth  their  own  devilish  dis- 
sembled falsehood  under  the  colour  of  the  wonderful 
word  of  God."  2 

Together  with  Fisher,  Bishop  of  Rochester,  the  most 
distinguished  and  respected  of  the  English  bishops,  Sir 
Thomas  More,  ex-chancellor  of  England,  had  been  ar- 
rested for  misprision  of  treason  in  concealing  the  nun's 
prophecies.  He  said  that  he  had  been  skeptical  about  her 
revelations,  refused  to  listen  to  anything  she  said  about 
the  King,  and  warned  her  of  danger.  No  steps  were 
taken  against  him,  but  Fisher  was  attainted  and  con- 
demned to  the  loss  of  all  his  property  and  imprisonment 
during  the  King's  pleasure.  The  confiscation  was  re- 
mitted on  payment  of  one  year's  revenue  of  his  bishopric 
and  he  was  not  kept  in  prison. 

When  the  Oath  of  Succession,  by  which  all  subjects 
were  to  be  sworn  to  obedience  to  the  King  and  Queen  and 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  VII,  138. 
•Ibid.,  VII,  287. 


198  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

their  heirs,  and  not  to  any  other  within  this  realm,  nor  to 
any  foreign  authority  nor  potentate,  and  to  defend  the 
whole  contents  of  the  Act  of  Succession,  was  offered, 
every  Englishman  asked  to  take  it  did  so;  except  some 
of  the  Franciscan  friars,  the  ex-Chancellor  Sir  Thomas 
More,  Fisher,  Bishop  of  Rochester,  and  a  few  others  of 
less  note. 

The  Government  closed  the  convents  of  the  Francis- 
cans, and  in  June,  1534,  threw  about  two  hundred  of 
their  members  into  prison.  Most  of  them  were  soon  per- 
mitted to  go  either  to  Ireland,  France  or  Scotland,  but 
thirty-two  were  sent  to  prisons  in  various  parts  of  Eng- 
land. The  jails  of  England  then,  and  for  generations 
afterward,  were  cold  and  haunted  by  infectious  diseases. 
Few  survived  a  long  confinement  in  them.  Three  years 
later  only  eight  of  these  brave  monks  remained  alive,  and 
they  were  at  last  allowed  to  go  to  Belgium. 

Sir  Thomas  More  and  Bishop  Fisher  offered  to  take  an 
oath  to  the  succession  of  the  children  of  Henry  and  Anne, 
but  not  in  the  form  prescribed;  nor  would  they  swear  to 
the  whole  contents  of  the  Act  implying  a  rejection  of  the 
Papal  sentence  annulling  the  marriage.  They  were  com- 
mitted to  the  Tower,  April,  1534. 

Their  refusal  to  take  the  oath  was  a  dangerous  incident. 
The  English  clergy  had  voted  in  Convocation  in  accord- 
ance with  the  legislation  of  Parliament,  but  there  was 
great  opposition  among  them,  not  only  to  lay  control,  but 
also  to  the  denial  of  the  Papal  authority.  The  Govern- 
ment began  to  be  aware  that  in  the  confessional,  in  the 
pulpit,  in  private  conversation,  the  nation  was  being  urged 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  199 

to  stand  by  the  Pope  and  resist  the  King.  They  felt  it 
necessary  to  take  strenuous  action. 

It  was  the  duty  of  a  pope  to  extirpate  heresy  and 
subdue  schism.  Previous  popes  had  again  and  again 
appealed  to  all  good  Christians  to  do  this  by  the  sword. 
And  the  temper  of  the  modern  Curia  had  not  changed. 
The  College  of  Cardinals  wrote  to  the  Emperor  in  March, 
1524,  telling  him:  "that  former  Emperors  did  not  earn 
their  great  reputation  by  expelling  the  French,  conquering 
the  English  nor  subjecting  Italy,  but  by  making  war  on  the 
Jews,  putting  heretics  to  death  and  subduing  Africa  to  the 
Christian  obedience.  They  exhorted  him  to  follow  their 
example  by  concluding  peace  with  France,  making  war 
with  the  Turks  and  trampling  under  foot  and  extirpat- 
ing the  Lutheran  heresy."  1 

Cromwell  wished  to  meet  the  attitude  frankly  expressed 
to  him  by  the  Imperial  Ambassador,  "that  if  the  Pope 
were  to  fulminate  censures  *  *  *  which  would  de- 
prive the  King  of  his  title  and  deliver  his  kingdom  to 
those  who  took  possession,  it  would  be  the  most  just  and 
catholic  title  that  any  prince  could  have."  z  An  Act  of 
Parliament  was  passed  in  the  end  of  1534  making  it  trea- 
son to  deny  any  of  the  King's  titles,  or  to  pronounce 
maliciously  by  words  or  writings  that  the  King  was  here- 
tic, schismatic,  tyrant,  infidel  or  usurper. 

Under  this  Act,  the  Carthusian  monks  were  required  to 
acknowledge  expressly  that  Henry  was  Supreme  Head  of 
the  Church  of  England.  The  result  was  one  of  the  pitia- 
ble tragedies  which  continued  intermittently  down  into 


1  Calendars,  Spanish,  Vol.  II,  page  609. 
1  Letters  and  Papers,  VIII,  page  371. 


200  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  seventeenth  century,  because  the  conscience  of  some 
Englishmen  made  them  traitors  in  the  eyes  of  others. 
The  Carthusian  monks  were  honored  of  all  men  until 
religion  and  patriotism  came  into  conflict,  and  they  had 
proved  the  honesty  of  their  convictions  by  their  lives, 
before  they  sealed  them  with  martyr's  blood.  The 
priors  of  these  convents  finally  pleaded  guilty  to  declaring 
that  "the  King  is  not  Supreme  Head  on  earth  of  the 
Church  of  England."  They  were  executed  May  4,  1535, 
by  the  awful  method  of  the  legal  punishment  for  treason, 
their  leader  declaring  at  the  gallows  that  he  was  there 
because  "Holy  Mother  Church  has  decreed  otherwise  than 
the  King  and  Parliament,  and  rather  than  disobey  the 
Church  he  was  ready  to  die."  Six  weeks  later  three 
more  were  executed  on  the  same  charge.  For  two  years 
the  other  brethren  were  confined  in  their  convent,  and 
every  effort  was  made  by  sermons  and  books  to 
persuade  them  to  give  up  their  allegiance  to  the  Pope. 
Under  this  treatment  and  the  pressure  of  harsh  discipline, 
twenty  of  them  took  the  oath  acknowledging  the  royal 
supremacy  in  May,  1537.  Twelve  recalcitrants  went  to 
prison,  where  nine  of  them  soon  died.  The  remaining 
three  were  sent  to  the  gallows. 

Their  fate  moved  little  pity  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
approved  the  policy  they  opposed.  Executions  were  very 
common.  Scores  of  men  were  hanged  for  petty  offenses 
against  the  common  law.  Death,  therefore,  did  not  seem 
so  severe  a  penalty  as  it  does  now. 

Cromwell  appears  to  have  had  a  strong  trait  of  hu- 
maneness in  him,  but  it  is  probable  that  he  thought  of 
these  executions  for  the  safety  of  the  state  as  calmly  as 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  201 

his  opponents,  Gardiner  and  Pole,  when  they  came  to  the 
head  of  affairs,  took  the  burning  of  nearly  three  hundred 
men  whose  conscience  forbade  them  to  consent  to  the 
destruction  of  the  church  established  during  Cromwell's 
administration. 

Fisher  was  found  guilty  of  treason  by  a  jury  and  be- 
headed in  June,  1535.  He  ascended  the  scaffold  meekly 
and  bravely,  as  became  an  honest  old  bishop  dying  for 
conscience'  sake. 

Sir  Thomas  More  was  condemned  to  death  on  the  ist 
of  July.  An  acknowledgment  of  the  Royal  Supremacy 
or  a  denial  of  the  Pope's  power  to  depose  the  King  or 
invalidate  his  marriage,  would  at  once  have  procured  his 
liberty.  There  was  difficulty  about  the  legal  evidence  to 
convict  him,  for  he  was  a  skilled  lawyer,  and  had  kept 
silence  about  his  opinions.  The  testimony  of  Richard 
Rich,  the  Solicitor  General,  to  a  private  conversation  in 
the  Tower  was  used  to  justify  a  verdict,  and  More  de- 
nounced Rich  in  open  court  as  a  perjurer.  More  was  the 
most  celebrated  of  living  Englishmen,  the  worthy  intimate 
of  Erasmus.  His  virtues  were  as  well  known  as  his 
learning,  and  all  men  loved  him,  except  the  friends  of 
heretics  whom  he  had  pursued  to  the  death  with  con- 
scientious severity  and  thought  "worse  than  murderers."  l 
Everybody,  including  his  own  family,  tried  to  persuade 
him  to  conform,  but  he  smilingly  refused.  In  the  writ- 
ings of  his  youth  he  had  rejected  the  ascetic  ideal,  pilgrim- 
age, fasting  and  the  use  of  relics,  questioned  the  exclusive 
priesthood  of  the  clergy,  impugned  the  good  faith  of  the 
popes,  and  satirized  their  influence  upon  political  moral- 

1  More's  Works,  page  901. 


202  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ity.1  But  when  reform  deepened  into  revolution  he,  like 
most  of  the  older  humanists,  took  alarm.  His  hopes  for 
the  progress  of  truth  gave  way  to  a  fear  for  the  stability 
of  institutions,  and  the  bold  advocate  of  religious  liberty 
and  the  abolition  of  private  property,  persecuted  heretics 
fiercely  and  died  in  defense  of  the  Papacy.  In  earlier 
years  he  advised  Henry  not  to  print  that  treatise  for  the 
Supremacy  of  the  Pope  which  had  earned  the  royal  title 
of  Defender  of  the  Faith.  But  his  study  of  the  question 
under  the  stress  of  revolution  converted  him  into  a  be- 
liever in  the  Papal  Supremacy,  even  as  similar  study 
changed  Luther  from  an  adherent  into  an  opponent  of 
the  Pope,  and  More  died  for  his  convictions  with  such 
beautiful  simplicity  that  it  seemed  easy.  When  he  laid 
his  life  on  the  altar  of  God  he  did  not  think  too  highly  of 
the  offering  or  take  himself  too  seriously  even  as  a  martyr. 
Kneeling  on  the  scaffold,  the  last  gleam  of  his  sunny 
humor  played  over  the  uplifted  axe.  He  swept  aside  his 
long  beard,  saying,  "Pity  that  should  be  cut ;  that  has  not 
committed  treason." 

To  modern  judgment  the  execution  of  these  men  seems 
both  a  crime  and  a  blunder.  It  must  be  remembered  that 
in  the  sixteenth  century  the  killing  of  men  for  opinions 
was  practised  by  all  governments  and  approved  by  relig- 
ious teachers  of  almost  all  types.  Lutherans,  Calvinists, 
Zwinglians,  Anglicans,  Roman  Catholics  were  agreed 
that  it  was  the  right  and,  if  needful,  the  duty  of  the  state 
to  repress  false  opinions  by  the  sword.  When  More 
urged  that  he  should  not  be  put  in  peril  of  his  life  for 
opinion,  Cromwell  replied  it  was  as  just  to  put  men  in 

1  Utopia. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  203 

peril  before  the  law  for  opinions  dangerous  to  the  state  as 
for  opinions  dangerous  to  the  church,  and  More,  when  in 
office,  had  sternly  enforced  the  laws  against  heresy.  More 
could  only  reply  that  the  opinions  for  whose  denial  he 
had  condemned  men  to  death  were  old  and  held  in  many 
countries;  this  opinion  which  he  denied  was  new  and 
held  in  one  country.1 

More  and  Fisher,  like  the  Carthusians,  were  appointed 
to  be  tried  because  they  were  the  most  conspicuous  de- 
fenders of  the  Papacy.  When  the  Government  felt  it 
had  made  clear  its  determination  to  suppress  without 
faltering  all  attacks  upon  the  succession  to  the  throne, 
executions  stopped.  More's  son,  condemned  also  for  re- 
fusing the  oath,  was  pardoned.2 

Cranmer  felt  that  the  execution  of  More  and  Fisher 
was  a  blunder.  He  advised  that  their  offer  to  swear  to 
the  succession  in  their  own  words  should  be  accepted. 
Cromwell  wrote  to  him  that  the  King  could  not  agree, 
because  he  felt  "that  manner  of  swearing,  if  it  should  be 
suffered,  might  be  an  utter  destruction  of  his  whole  cause 
and  to  the  effect  of  the  law."  This  letter  only  expresses 
what  the  King  wanted  to  give  out  as  the  reason  for 
severity.  It  does  not  necessarily  show  either  Cromwell's 
own  feeling  or  the  real  though  perhaps  unconscious  mo- 
tives of  Henry. 

There  are  no  signs  of  Cromwell's  feeling  about  Fisher, 
unless  this  is  one.  Antonio  Bonvisi,  an  Italian  merchant 
living  in  London,  sent  meat,  wine  and  jelly  regularly  to 
the  two  prisoners ;  and  More  wrote  him  with  charcoal  on 

1  Mart's  Examination. 

1  Life  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  by  Cressacre  More. 


204  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  eve  of  execution  a  beautiful  letter  of  gratitude  and 
friendship.  It  was  shown  in  court  that  he  had  done  this 
kindness  to  Fisher.  He  had  long  been  a  close  friend  of 
Cromwell  and  the  friendship  continued  intimate.1  Fisher 
was  a  sincere  ecclesiastic,  unable  to  conceive  of  the  Eng- 
lish State  as  existing  outside  of  the  Roman  Church. 
There  was  good  reason  to  believe  that  he  had  not  con- 
cealed his  opinions  from  friends.  The  upshot  of  those 
opinions  makes  evident  to  us  what  Cromwell  suspected, 
that,  if  excommunication  produced  either  insurrection  or 
invasion,  Fisher  would  not  stand  by  the  Crown  against  the 
adherents  of  the  Pope.  He  had  frequent  secret  confer- 
ences with  the  Spanish  Ambassador  as  to  the  best  means 
of  thwarting  the  royal  policy.  At  a  time  when  Chapuys 
was  urging  Charles  V  to  forcibly  interfere  in  the  affairs 
of  England,  "A  work  as  pleasing  in  the  eyes  of  God  as 
war  upon  the  Turk,"  he  writes:  "Bishop  Fisher  advises 
prompt  action  on  the  part  of  your  Majesty,  such  as  I 
recommended  in  one  of  my  last  dispatches.  Indeed,  not 
many  days  ago  he  sent  me  word  to  say  that  strong  meas- 
ures must  now  be  taken."  z 

More,  on  the  other  hand,  maintained  silence  on  the 
Royal  Supremacy,  would  neither  affirm  nor  deny  it  when 
questioned  in  Court  and  had  no  dealings  with  any  foreign 
ambassador.  There  are  strong  indications  that  Cromwell 
deeply  regretted  his  death.  When  he  heard  he  had  first 
refused  the  oath,  he  cried  out,  "He  Vould  rather  his 
own  son  had  his  head  stricken  off,  for  displeasure  and 
suspicion  would  now  be  aroused  in  the  King's  mind." 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  VIII,  page  329;  X,  No.  439. 
1  Calendars,  Spanish,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  812,  813,  821. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  205 

In  a  note  from  the  Tower  More  tells  his  daughter  that 
when  he  offered,  if  he  had  the  King's  license,  to  give  his 
reasons  for  refusing  to  answer,  Cromwell  interrupted 
him,  pointing  out  the  legal  danger  of  doing  this  even  with 
the  King's  license.  "In  this  good  warning  he  showed 
himself  my  especial  tender  friend."  And  he  writes  that 
when  he  finally  refused  the  oath  "Cromwell  seemed 
greatly  to  pity  him."  * 

Fisher's  fate,  which  was  so  closely  bound  to  More's, 
was  sealed  when  the  Pope  appointed  him  a  Cardinal. 
Henry  took  this  promotion  of  a  man  under  the  charge  of 
treason  as  a  challenge  to  touch  him.  When  the  divine 
right  of  kings  was  objected  to  Oliver  Cromwell,  who  felt 
that  the  life  of  Charles  endangered  the  Commonwealth, 
he  answered,  "I  tell  you  we  will  cut  off  his  head  with  the 
crown  on  it."  To  "throw  the  mantle  of  the  Church" 
over  Fisher  was  to  draw  the  same  fire  from  Henry.  It 
brought  out  the  question  underlying  the  whole  contro- 
versy, whether  an  Italian  Pope  or  her  own  King  was 
supreme  ruler  of  England.  Henry  swore  that  when 
Fisher's  red  hat  arrived  he  should  have  no  head  to  wear 
it.  It  may  be  conjectured  that  the  real  cause  of  More's 
death  was  the  jealous  egotism  of  the  King,  now  so  in- 
flamed that  one  word  of  criticism  gave  more  pain  than 
fifty  of  flattery  could  cause  pleasure.  Henry  VIII  was 
not  satisfied  to  be  allowed  to  do  as  he  wanted.  His 
morbid  conscience  played  into  his  vanity,  and  all  his  inti- 
mates must  also  say  on  demand  that  what  he  wanted  to 
do  was  right. 

The   Bull    of   Deprivation,    long   threatened   against 

»  More's  Works. 


206  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Henry,  was  now  (August  30,  1535)  prepared  but  not 
issued.  It  forbade  his  subjects  to  obey  the  King  or  his 
officials  or  magistrates.  It  absolved  all  princes  from 
every  oath  to  him  and  commanded  them  to  break  every 
treaty  with  him.  All  princes  were  commanded  to  rise 
in  arms  against  him  and  all  who  obeyed  him;  all  Chris- 
tians were  to  seize  wherever  found  the  money,  ships,  cred- 
its and  goods  of  any  one  who  acknowledged  his  author- 
ity. And  by  the  "fullness  of  power"  given  to  the  Pope, 
these  became  the  absolute  property  of  whoever  seized 
them.  All  who  refused  to  enforce  this  sentence  became 
subject  to  the  same  penalties.  Every  clergyman  in  the 
world  was  to  proclaim  this  curse  before  the  largest  possi- 
ble concourse,  and  a  lighted  candle  was  to  be  cast  down 
and  extinguished,  even  as  the  souls  of  Henry  and  his 
supporters  were  condemned  to  hell.1  But  the  publication 
of  the  bull  was  suspended. 

Such  a  sentence  would  readily  suggest  to  Cromwell, 
even  if  there  were  no  other  motive  in  his  mind,  that  the 
defense  of  his  policy  required  the  suppression  of  the  mon- 
asteries. This  act  earned  Cromwell's  familiar  name, 
"The  Hammer  of  the  Monks,"  and  the  worst  traits  of  his 
character,  traits  common  to  most  men  of  the  day,  show  so 
plainly  in  the  transaction  that  the  solid  reasons  for  it 
which  appealed  to  a  man  of  his  type  have  been  obscured. 
The  monastic  orders  were  corrupt.  Cromwell  sent  com- 
missioners to  investigate  the  condition  of  the  monasteries. 
Their  sweeping  denunciations  were  based  on  hasty  in- 
vestigation and  probably  exaggerated  for  a  purpose. 
The  so-called  "Black  Book"  which  presented  to  Parlia- 

1  Wilkins'  Concilia,  III,  792. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  207 

ment  the  reports  of  this  commission  to  investigate  the 
monastic  houses,  has  perished.  It  is  safe  to  conclude, 
however,  that  it  was  not  drawn  up  in  a  judicial  frame  of 
mind.  But  there  are  unquestionable  judgments  on  the 
general  corruption  of  the  monastic  orders  of  the  day. 

Gasparo  Contarini,  afterward  Cardinal,  writing  in  1516 
on  "The  Duties  of  a  Bishop,"  said:  "Unfortunately  in 
some  of  the  chief  and  celebrated  cities  most  cloisters  have 
become  almost  lupanaria."  * 

Bembo,  Papal  Secretary  to  Leo  X,  afterward  Cardinal, 
wrote :  "I  have  often  found,  under  the  affairs  of  friars,  all 
human  wickednesses  covered  with  diabolical  hypocrisy."  2 
In  1536  the  Pope  appointed  a  commission  of  the  ablest 
and  best  men  around  him  to  draw  up  a  report  on  the  re- 
form of  the  Church.  There  is  no  language  in  any  of  the 
English  reports  or  discussions  stronger  than  that  in  which 
they  denounce  the  condition  of  the  monastic  orders. 

"Another  abuse  to  be  corrected  is  in  the  religious  or- 
ders, because  many  have  departed  from  God  to  such  an 
extent  that  they  are  a  scandal  to  secular  Christians  and 
do  much  harm  by  their  example.  We  think  all  the  con- 
ventual orders  ought  to  be  abolished',  not,  however,  in 
such  a  way  as  to  do  injury  to  any  one,  but  by  prohibiting 
them  from  admitting  novices.  For  thus,  without  any 
wrong,  they  might  be  swiftly  swept  out  of  existence  and 
good  religious  could  be  substituted  for  them.  But  for 
the  present  we  think  it  would  be  best  if  all  boys  who  have 
not  taken  vows  of  any  sort  should  be  kept  out  of  their 

1  Opera  Parisiis,  1571,  page  426. 

a  Letters,  1520,  Opere  Venezia,  1729,  I,  III,  page  385. 


208  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

monasteries."  1  This  report  was,  quite  properly,  intended 
to  be  private,  but  the  Protestant  apologetes  having  by 
some  means  procured  a  copy,  its  publication  was  forced. 
It  was  forwarded  to  Cranmer  from  Louvain,  with  the  re- 
port that  the  monks  of  that  place  "fear  their  houses  will 
perish.  They  have  faith  in  the  Provincial  of  the  Car- 
thusians who  lately  came  from  Italy,  prophesying  all 
rules  of  religion  to  be  annulled."  2  Cranmer  forwarded 
this  letter  to  the  Government,  probably  to  Cromwell,  add- 
ing, "The  book  he  sent  me  was  Concilium  delectorum 
Cardinalium  de  emendenda  ecclesia"  and  copies  out  the 
passage  quoted  above. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  monasteries  of  Eng- 
land were  not  as  bad  as  those  in  some  other  parts  of  the 
world.  There  are  satires  and  attacks  on  them  in  English 
popular  literature,  but  they  are  less  numerous  and  bitter 
than  in  Germany  or  Italy.  During  the  destruction  of 
the  English  monasteries  there  were  no  outbreaks  of  popu- 
lar hatred  against  them,  while  several  counties  rose  in 
arms  to  defend  them.  On  the  other  hand,  the  insurgent 
German  peasants,  in  1525,  though  they  killed  no  monks, 
destroyed  monastic  buildings  with  a  careful  fury  that  in- 
dicates hatred  coming  out  of  a  long  smouldering  sense  of 
wrong.  But  though  the  English  monasteries  were  proba- 
bly neither  as  corrupt  as  monasteries  in  other  parts  of  the 
world  nor  as  bad  as  they  were  reported  to  be  by  their 
enemies,  it  would  be  possible  to  collect,  out  of  the  remanent 

1  Concilium  delectorum  Cardinalium  de  emendenda  ecclesia,  British  Museum. 

*  Letters  and  Papers,  VIII,  739.  This  letter  is  assigned  to  the  wrong  date, 
1585.  The  Concilium  was  first  published  in  1538.  The  letter  also  alludes  to 
an  answer  in  preparation  to  the  King's  Epistle  to  the  Emperor.  The  Epistle 
appeared  in  1588. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  209 

material  from  which  the  Black  Book  was  prepared,  a 
formidable  body  of  definite  evidence  to  show  that  in  many 
of  them  the  ideal  of  their  own  order  did  not  control  the 
lives  of  the  inmates.  The  Jesuit  apologete  Sanders 
wrote,  in  1575,  of  "the  publication  of  the  enormities  of 
the  monasteries,  partly  discovered  and  partly  invented."  * 
This  judgment  by  an  orthodox  Roman  Catholic  church- 
man of  the  next  generation  after  their  fall,  agrees  with 
the  testimony  which  survives  and  is  probably  fair. 

Whatever  the  degree  of  their  guilt  may  have  been  they 
menaced  the  state.  There  were  in  England  more  than 
seven  hundred  monastic  establishments  and  they  owned 
enormous  stretches  of  land.  Ninety  monasteries  of 
Gloucestershire  had  an  average  of  sixty-five  thousand 
acres  apiece.  Twenty-seven  abbots  had  seats  in  Parlia- 
ment. The  bishops  could  not  control  the  monks,  whose 
vows  bound  them  to  allegiance  to  their  superiors,  gener- 
ally foreigners.  They  were  directly  connected  with  the 
Papacy,  and  the  monastic  orders  came  to  be  spoken  of  as 
the  Pope's  standing  army.  Cromwell  was  afraid  of  them. 
The  schismatic  governments  of  Europe — the  Lutheran 
states,  the  Scandinavian  kingdoms  and  the  Zwinglian 
cantons  of  Switzerland — suppressed  the  monasteries  in 
the  sixteenth  century.  Most  of  the  Roman  Catholic  coun- 
tries limited  the  power  and  wealth  of  the  monasteries 
under  different  conditions  in  the  nineteenth — Portugal, 
1834-64;  Spain,  1835-51;  Italy,  1866;  Prussia,  1875; 
France,  1880.  The  United  States  is  a  country  whose 
Constitution  and  practice  exclude  any  suspicion  of  relig- 
ious intolerance,  but  her  Commission  in  the  Philippines 

1  Sanders'  Anglican  Schism,  Ed.  David  Lewis,  page  130. 


210  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

reported  that  the  landed  possessions  of  the  monastic  orders 
were  an  obstacle  to  good  government.  And  steps  have 
been  taken  to  destroy  their  political  power  by  buying  their 
great  estates.  There  must  be  some  reason,  plausible  to 
say  the  least,  for  so  universal  an  action. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  monastic  in- 
stitutions seemed  to  many  people  an  anachronism  in  the 
modern  world  coming  into  being.  The  ascetic  ideal  was 
outworn.  Cromwell,  as  a  man  of  the  Renascence,  shared 
that  repulsion  of  the  humanist  for  the  monk  which  ap- 
pears in  Renascence  literature  from  the  Decameron  to  the 
Utopia,  and  led  the  Jesuits,  who  used  the  new  learning 
in  the  service  of  the  Church,  to  abandon  the  ascetic  ideal. 
The  loss  of  its  power  over  men's  minds  went  far  deeper 
than  appears  in  controversy.  In  the  twelfth  century  four 
hundred  and  eighteen  monasteries  were  founded  in  Eng- 
land. In  the  thirteenth,  one  hundred  and  thirty-nine. 
In  the  fourteenth  century  only  twenty-three.  In  the 
fifteenth  century  only  three.1  The  monks  were  no  longer 
the  conservators  of  learning,  but  the  strongest  defenders 
of  scholasticism  against  the  humanist  revival  of  letters. 
On  the  Continent  they  were  the  bitterest  opponents  of 
Reuchlin  and  Erasmus.  Nor  were  they  more  intellec- 
tually progressive  in  England.  Pole  says  that  Reynolds 
was  the  "only  monk  in  England  who  knew  the  three 
languages  (Latin,  Greek,  Hebrew)  in  which  all  liberal 
learning  is  contained."  z 

Beyond  all  this,  in  the  opinion  of  many  men,  the 
monks  did  too  little  and  got  too  much.  A  contempo- 

1  Pearson,  Hist.  Atlas,  page  61. 
•  Letters  and  Papers,  X,  page  406. 


(THOMAS  CROMWELE  211 

rary  writer  expresses  their  feeling  roughly  when  he 
writes  of  the  "nourishing  of  a  great  sort  of  idle  abbey 
lubbers,  which  are  apt  to  nothing  only  to  eat  and 
drink."  x  Sir  Thomas  More,  in  his  critical  youth,  wrote 
of  "those  holy  men,  the  abbots,  who,  not  thinking  it 
enough  that  they  living  at  their  ease  do  no  good  to  the 
public,  resolve  to  do  it  harm  instead  of  good"  2  (by  turn- 
ing tillage  fields  into  pasture).  And  Sir  Richard 
Gresham,  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  gave  the  criticism  prac- 
tical form  when  he  asked  the  King  to  put  three  hospitals 
in  the  city  under  the  rule  of  the  Mayor  and  Aldermen, 
because  they  "had  been  founded  and  endowed  for  the  aid 
of  poor  and  impotent  people,  not  to  maintain  canons, 
priests  and  monks  to  live  in  pleasure." 

Early  in  1536  an  Act  of  Parliament  gave  to  the  King 
the  property  of  all  religious  houses  having  a  yearly  income 
below  £200  (equivalent  to  $10,000-$  12,000),  because  "of 
the  vicious,  carnal  and  abominable  living  of  small  monas- 
teries." Their  superiors,  if  they  did  not  try  to  conceal 
the  jewels  of  the  houses,  were  to  be  pensioned.  The 
monks  might  be  assigned  to  the  greater  monasteries, 
"wherein,  thanks  be  to  God,  religion  is  right  well  kept  and 
observed."  Any  monk  who  wished  to  return  to  the  world 
was  to  receive  eight  gold  pieces. 

But  this  last  change  in  the  ancient  order  caused  the 
cup  of  wrath  against  Henry  to  overflow.  That  there 
was  discontent  in  England  and  danger  to  the  throne  is 
sufficiently  shown  by  the  legislation  passed  to  defend  it 
and  the  nine  executions  under  these  laws.  Observers  dif- 

1  Dialogue  between  Pole  and  Lupset. 
1  Utopia. 


212  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

fered  as  to  the  extent  of  that  discontent.  The  Spanish 
Ambassador,  who  spoke  no  English  and  heard  only  what 
the  opposition  faction  of  the  nobility  told  him,  thought  the 
great  majority  of  the  people  were  against  the  King  and 
waiting  to  welcome  the  Emperor  when  he  should  come  to 
punish  Henry's  rebellion  from  the  Pope.  This  judgment, 
so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  what  happened  fifteen  years 
later,  when  the  marriage  of  Mary  to  the  Emperor's  son 
almost  cost  her  the  crown,  was  very  much  mistaken. 

The  opposition  faction  of  the  nobility  were,  it  is  true, 
engaged  in  forming  a  conspiracy  against  the  throne.  They 
had  long  been  begging  the  Spanish  Ambassador  to  per- 
suade Charles  V  to  invade  England,  and  promising  to  sup- 
port him  in  arms  if  he  came.  As  early  as  the  end  of  1534 
Lords  Hussey  and  Darcy  offered,  if  imperial  troops  were 
sent  to  the  North  and  the  mouth  of  the  Thames,  to  rise 
under  the  imperial  banner  with  a  crucifix  attached.  They 
promised  the  support  of  large  numbers  of  noblemen  and 
gentlemen  of  the  North.  From  several  quarters  advice 
came  to  the  Emperor  to  centre  this  discontent  among  the 
nobles  around  Reginald  Pole,  an  heir  to  the  Yorkist  claim 
to  the  throne  and  intimately  connected  with  three  families 
in  the  Southwest  who  had  great  wealth  and  influence.  "In 
two  counties  alone  they  might  easily  raise  twenty  thousand 
men  under  arms,  the  best  soldiers  England  can  boast  of." 
The  Ambassador  told  his  master  that  many  people  thought 
Pole's  title  better  than  Henry's,1  and  said  Reginald's 
brother  Geoffrey  continually  urged  that  if  Reginald  came 
with  an  imperial  army  England  could  easily  be  conquered.2 

1  Spanish  Calendars,  IV,  part  II,  page  813. 
•  Letters  and  Papers,  VII,  page  620. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  213 

His  elder  brother,  Lord  Montague,  was  reported  ready  to 
take  arms,  and  his  neighbor,  the  Marquis  of  Exeter,  "only 
regrets  that  he  has  no  opportunity  to  shed  his  blood  for 
Katherine  and  Mary.  If  anything  were  doing,  he  would 
not  be  among  the  laggards."  But  the  threads  of  this  con- 
spiracy could  not  be  drawn  together,  and  it  was  surprised 
by  an  unpremeditated  outbreak  against  the  throne  arising 
among  the  common  people  of  the  North. 

England,  north  of  a  line  drawn  from  the  Wash  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Humber,  has  until  recent  times  differed 
much  from  the  remaining  two-thirds  of  the  kingdom.  It 
was  always  conservative,  standing  for  things  as  they  were 
or  had  been.  In  the  civil  wars  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury it  became  the  stronghold  of  the  Crown.  During  the 
sixteenth  century,  it  rose  intermittently  against  the  Crown 
in  attempts  to  restore  the  pillars  of  the  old  state,  the  aris- 
tocracy and  the  mediaeval  Church.  It  was  thinly  settled 
and  the  inhabitants  lived  by  raising  grain  and  cattle,  with 
very  little  trade  or  manufactures.  The  instincts  bred  by 
feudalism  lingered  in  the  North  long  after  they  had  per- 
ished elsewhere  in  England.  The  influence  of  the  priests 
over  the  people  was  stronger  than  in  the  South,  and  the 
habit  of  righting  with  the  Scots  and  each  other,  made  the 
inhabitants  apt  to  take  to  their  weapons. 

The  monastery  of  Hexham  stood  near  the  debatable 
land  of  the  border.  Its  stout  walls  and  bold  canons  were 
a  defense  against  the  raids  of  the  Scots,  a  refuge  to  re- 
treating English  raiders.  In  September,  the  commission- 
ers for  its  dissolution  found  the  gates  shut,  the  inmates  in 
full  armor  standing  on  the  roof,  and  the  people  of  the 
neighborhood  pouring  in  armed  at  the  sound  of  the  alarm 


214  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

bell.  One  of  the  canons,  holding  an  arrow  on  the  string 
of  his  bent  bow,  called  out,  "We  be  twenty  brethren,  and 
we  shall  die  all  ere  you  shall  have  the  house."  Before 
any  steps  could  be  taken  to  subdue  these  bold  monks, 
Lincolnshire  rose  in  rebellion.  By  the  6th  of  October, 
"ten  thousand  well  harnessed  men,  with  thirty  thousand 
others,  some  harnessed  and  some  not,"  were  reported  to 
be  marching  on  Lincoln.  "And  the  country  rises  wholly 
before  them  as  they  go."  *  They  cursed  Cromwell,  and  a 
false  rumor  said  they  had  hanged  one  of  his  men,  sewed 
up  another  in  a  bullskin  and  then  baited  him  with  dogs. 
Their  banner,  displaying  a  plough  and  a  chalice,  and  their 
demand  for  the  expulsion  of  "vile  blood"  from  the  royal 
councils,  indicates  the  mixed  motives,  agrarian,  feudal, 
religious,  which  roused  them. 

Steps  were  at  once  taken  to  raise  the  royal  levies.  A 
list  of  two  hundred  and  thirty-eight  gentlemen  and  noble- 
men who  were  to  muster  from  two  men  to  a  thousand, 
has  survived.  But  there  was  no  need  to  put  forth  the 
strength  of  the  kingdom.  As  the  van  of  the  King's 
forces  approached,  the  insurgents  began  to  break  up  and 
return  to  their  homes.2  On  the  I3th  of  October,  one 
week  after  the  issuing  of  the  commissions  of  array,  Lin- 
coln, the  centre  of  the  rebellion,  was  defenseless,  and 
the  gentlemen,  who  claimed  to  have  been  forced  to  join 
the  Commons  in  this  rising,  were  offering  to  come  into 
the  royal  camp. 

But  on  the  same  day  that  this  news  arrived  in  London, 
a  message  came  from  York,  the  second  city  of  the  King- 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XI,  567. 
•Ibid.,  XI,  658,  694,  701. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  215 

dom,  asking  aid  against  a  new  rebellion.  It  was  far 
more  serious  than  the  first.  On  the  I7th  of  October 
40,000  men  were  reported  under  arms.1  The  leaders 
made  every  effort  to  organize  the  movement  and  force  the 
whole  North  into  it.  The  commons  were  called  to  arms 
on  pain  of  death.  And  if  any  gentleman  refused  the 
oath  of  the  insurgents,  he  was  to  be  put  to  death,  the 
next  of  his  blood  put  in  his  place,  "and  if  he  deny  it,  put 
him  to  death  likewise,  and  so  on."  z  This  notice  was  to 
be  posted  on  the  doors  of  all  parish  churches. 

In  the  mind  of  the  lawyer  Aske,  who  was  its  active 
leader,  the  movement  was  aimed  against  the  statutes  of 
Succession  and  Supremacy  and  the  Act  suppressing  the 
smaller  monasteries.3  The  commonalty  rose  in  defense 
of  the  old  institutions  they  loved  and  against  the  men 
who  had  changed  them.  "I  trust  to  God,"  cried  out  a 
priest  when  the  insurrection  was  in  full  swing,  "we  shall 
have  the  old  world  again."  Their  oath  bound  them  to 
enter  into  "The  Pilgrimage  of  Grace  for  the  Common- 
wealth   for  the  maintenance  of  God's  faith  and 

Church,  preservation  of  the  King's  person  and  issue,  pur- 
ifying the  nobility  of  all  villains'  blood  and  evil  coun- 
selors to  the  institutions  of  Christ's  Church,  and  sup- 
pression of  heretic  opinions."  4  Their  songs  demanded 
that  the  innkeeper  (Cranmer)  should  give  place  to  the 
ancient  nobles  in  the  Royal  Council  and  the  shearman 
(Cromwell)  be  hanged  high  as  Haman. 

However  much  power  Henry  might  delegate  to  his 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XI,  692,  758. 
» Ibid.,  XII,  part  I,  163. 
» Ibid.,  XII,  part  I,  page  405. 
*Ibid.,  XI,  page  272. 


216  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ministers,  he  was  always  King  of  England — a  strong- 
willed  man  and  an  able  ruler  of  men.  From  the  time 
when  the  trouble  began  in  the  North  until  it  ended,  let- 
ters and  reports  came,  not  as  before  to  Cromwell,  but 
to  Henry.  And  the  orders  of  Government  issued  directly 
from  the  King.  This  was  not  simply  to  avoid  irritating 
the  rebels,  one  of  whose  chief  demands  was  Cromwell's 
head.  In  the  hour  of  danger  the  master  wanted  the 
helm  in  his  own  hand.  There  are  no  signs  that  Henry 
lost  courage  before  the  storm.  There  is  in  all  his  letters 
no  trace  of  any  intention  of  yielding  one  bit  to  an  in- 
surrection raised,  like  most  rebellions,  in  the  name  of  the 
throne  it  attacked  and  to  free  the  King  from  evil  counsels. 
He  was  angry  with  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  for  making  a 
truce  with  the  insurgents,1  because,  Norfolk  said,  his 
army  was  without  fuel  or  provisions  and  the  pestilence 
had  begun  among  them.  Henry  sent  commissioners  to 
meet  the  rebel  leaders  in  December,  with  instructions  to 
grant  a  Parliament  to  assemble  when  he  should  appoint, 
and  a  pardon.  If  they  demanded  anything  else,  the 
commissioners  must  ask  twenty  days'  respite,  secretly 
levy  the  forces  of  the  nearest  shires,  of  which  8000  men 
were  to  be  ready  at  an  hour's  warning,  hold  the  fords  of 
the  river  Don,  and  wait  till  he  advanced  in  person  with 
the  entire  force  of  the  kingdom  at  his  back.2  The  royal 
terms  were  accepted,  and  a  letter  sent  from  the  King 
invited  Aske  to  London.3  On  his  return  he  issued  in 
January  a  manifesto  that  the  King  would  order  his  sub- 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XI,  1226. 
» Ibid.,  XI,  1227. 
•  Ibid.,  XI,  1806. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  217 

jects'  petitions  in  a  Parliament  to  be  shortly  held  at 
York. 

But  the  North  did  not  trust  these  promises.  Two 
futile  risings  followed,  and  the  Council  of  the  North 
advised  Henry  to  exercise  great  severity.  He  took  their 
advice.  These,  as  well  as  the  two  previous  insurrections, 
were  punished  with  the  rigor  which  marked  the  suppres- 
sion of  rebellion  in  England  down  to  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. Norfolk  had  been  suspected  by  others  beside  the 
King  of  not  wanting  to  fight  the  rebels.  The  Spanish 
Ambassador,  writing  to  advise  that  the  Pope  should  send 
Reginald  Pole  with  money  and  musketeers  to  aid  the 
insurrection,  had  reported  that  Norfolk  sympathized  with 
their  demands.  And  the  Pope,  in  telling  the  Spanish 
Ambassador  at  Rome  that  he  had  sent  the  money,  said 
the  rebels  had  found  a  new  leader  whose  name  ended 
in  "folc."  *  Norfolk  was  anxious  to  disprove  the  reports 
about  his  lack  of  zeal  of  which  the  King  had  informed 
him.  He  executed  seventy-four  by  martial  law,  induced 
Aske  and  other  leaders  to  go  to  London,  and  wrote 
advising  that  they  never  come  back.  "Hemlock  is  no 
worse  in  a  good  salad  than  I  think  the  remaining  of  any 
of  them  in  these  parts  should  be  ill  to  the  Common- 
wealth." 2  Cromwell  was  not  inclined  to  show  mercy  to 
those  who  had  asked  his  head  and  threatened  England 
with  civil  war.  Henry  had  always  insisted  on  force  and 
punishment,  and  accepted  reluctantly  the  temporizing 
policy  which  Norfolk  and  his  Councilors  advised.  None 
of  the  leaders  came  back  to  the  North,  except  in  chains 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XI,  1159. 
8  Ibid.,  XII,  page  311. 


218  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

to  be  hanged.  Aske,  in  private,  just  before  his  death 
(July,  1537),  acknowledged  that  they  had  expected  help 
from  abroad,  and  accused  the  King  and  Cromwell  of 
having  promised  him  life  if  he  would  confess.1  There 
is  other  reason  to  believe  that  the  treachery  of  which 
the  age  was  full,  mingled  with  severity  in  the  punishment 
of  the  insurrection.2 

It  made  evident  that  the  forces  which  desired  a  re- 
turn to  the  old  Church  and  State  were  not  strong  enough 
in  England  to  stay  the  progress  of  the  revolution  which 
was  destroying  the  institutions  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Even  in  the  northern  counties,  part  of  the  gentry  and 
nobility  could  not  be  dragooned  into  joining  the  insur- 
gents by  the  threat  of  death.  The  great  families 
had  stood  aloof,  and  some  country  gentlemen  had  held 
their  houses  for  the  King  by  arms.  The  doubtful  coun- 
ties of  Lancaster  and  Cheshire  had  offered  3000  men 
each  for  the  King.  Only  seven  out  of  the  thirty-seven 
counties,  and  those  the  most  thinly  populated  ones,  were 
affected  at  all.  Nor  could  the  utmost  inquiries  of  the 
Government  find  any  dangerous  signs  of  widespread  sym- 
pathy in  the  rest  of  England.  If  the  southern  coun- 
ties had  backed  the  North  the  throne  of  Henry  must  have 
fallen. 

The  motives  of  the  revolt  were  mixed,  but  it  was  pre- 
dominantly religious,  led  by  the  priests  and  monks,  or 
due  largely  to  their  influence.  The  Government  answered 
by  ordering  the  pulpits  everywhere  to  attack  the  suprem- 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XII,  part  II,  page  121. 

•  Es  Ring  ein  zuttiefer  verlogenheit  durch  die  welt  und  Jeder  hielt  es  fur 
erlaubt,  selbst  seinen  verbundeten  in  Jedem  Augenblicke  zu  verraten.  Huber 
Geschickte  Oesterreichs,  Vol.  Ill,  page  280. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  219 

acy  of  the  Pope  and  defend  the  new  Anglican  Church. 
And  Cromwell  did  his  best  in  every  way  to  replace  the 
scholastic  learning,  which  underlay  mediaeval  institutions 
and  ideas,  by  the  New  Learning  of  the  Renascence.  A 
clergyman  of  Bristol  felt  this  strongly  and  denounced  the 
"new  preachers,  preaching  new  learning  with  their  new 
books.  Their  new  learning  is  old  heresy  new  risen,  like 
unto  old  rusty  harness  new  furbished.  And  whereas  they 
say  they  have  brought  in  the  light — no — no — they  have 
brought  in  damnable  darkness  and  endless  damnation."  1 

Just  before  this  Northern  rebellion,  a  new  Parliament 
had  been  called,  June,  1537,  to  secure  the  work  of  the 
Parliament  of  1529.  In  a  session  of  six  weeks  it  es- 
tablished two  new  oaths;  on  the  Supremacy  and  the  Suc- 
cession. The  first  was  to  be  taken  by  every  ecclesiastical 
and  temporal  officer.  It  solemnly  renounced  the  Bishop 
of  Rome,  his  authority  and  jurisdiction,  and  promised 
support  to  the  King  as  Supreme  Head  of  England  in 
Church  and  State.  The  second  oath  was  appointed  be- 
cause the  "whole  peace,  unity  and  greatness  of  realm 
and  subjects  depends  upon  the  surety  in  the  succession 
to  the  Crown."  It  promised  to  hold  the  marriage  with 
Anne  Boleyn  invalid  and  to  defend  the  succession  of 
the  children  of  Jane  Seymour  (made  Queen  May,  1536), 
or  failing  children  by  her,  the  right  of  the  heir  named 
by  the  King  in  his  will.  To  refuse  either  oath  was 
treason. 

The  tragedy  of  Anne  Boleyn  had  been  foretold  by 
Wolsey  because  he  knew  Henry's  brutal  fickleness,  by 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XII,  part  I,  page  528. 


220  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Thomas  More  because  he  knew  Anne's  vulgar  levity. 
And  only  one  child,  a  girl,  had  been  born  of  her  to  meet 
the  kingdom's  need  of  heirs.  As  Henry's  passion  cooled 
into  neglect  Anne  struggled  desperately  to  hold  her  power. 
Cromwell  told  the  Spanish  Ambassador  she  was  doing 
her  best  to  get  his  head.  She  angered  the  King  by  hys- 
terical reproaches  for  his  infidelities.  In  the  spring 
of  1536  a  new  divorce  was  talked  of  in  Court  circles, 
because  of  the  lack  of  a  male  heir  and  the  King's  dislike 
for  his  wife.  There  would  have  been  small  difficulty  in 
getting  it  from  the  subservient  Archbishop  for  the  same 
grounds  on  which  he  declared  Anne's  marriage  null  and 
void,  May  17,  1536.  But  in  the  end  of  April,  Anne  was 
accused  to  the  King  of  adultery  and  desiring  his  death. 
Together  with  her  brother,  three  courtiers  and  a  court 
attendant,  she  was  arrested,  tried  before  the  peerage  of 
England,  the  Mayor,  Council  and  representatives  from 
the  trade  guilds  of  London,  declared  guilty  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  great  crowd  of  spectators,  and  soon  after  ex- 
ecuted. 

All  of  the  prisoners  but  one  asserted  their  innocence. 
The  distinct  and  definite  charges  which  have  survived  in 
summary  are  very  difficult  to  reconcile  with  Anne's 
innocence  of  the  entire  indictment.  The  chief  reason  for 
doubting  her  guilt  on  all  the  charges,  is  that  some  are  too 
bad  to  be  credible.  The  modern  hypothesis  that  she  was 
the  innocent  victim  of  a  diabolical  plot,  is  not  supported 
by  the  evidence.  If  the  object  had  been  simply  to  smooth 
the  way  for  another  marriage,  Anne's  death,  and  certainly 
the  death  of  five  men,  was  unnecessary.  And  the  hy- 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  221 

pothesis   is  therefore  not  only   unsustained   but   super- 
fluous.1 

Cromwell  knew  that  the  "Pilgrimage  of  Grace,"  the 
rising  of  the  North  for  mediaeval  ideals  against  the  new 
state,  national  and  lay,  independent  of  the  Universal 
Church  and  the  power  of  the  clergy,  had  been  connected 
with  a  Papal  conspiracy  to  force  England  back  to  obedi- 
ence. Of  the  nobles  who  had  plotted  with  the  Spanish 
Ambassador,  only  Lords  Hussey  and  Darcy  had  been 
involved  in  the  Northern  rebellion,  and  Cromwell  did 
not  know  that  the  houses  of  Exeter  and  Pole  had  offered 
to  serve  the  Emperor  against  the  King.  But  he  had 
gotten  hold  of  the  thread  of  conspiracy  from  the  other 
end.  Secret  information  from  Rome  told  him  that  the 
Pope  had  made  Reginald  Pole  Cardinal  for  England, 
with  the  express  purpose,  as  the  Pope  himself  said,  of 
sending  him  "to  Flanders,  publicly  to  admonish  the  King 
to  return  to  the  Church,  secretly  to  aid  the  Northern  in- 
surrection" with  money  and  Church  authority.2  He  knew 
that  Pole  had  written  a  most  terrific  indictment  of 
Henry's  policy,  appealing  for  insurrection  and  foreign  in- 
vasion, and  that,  on  arriving  in  Flanders  too  late  to  help 
the  insurrection,  he  threatened,  unless  England  returned 
to  the  Papal  obedience,  to  publish  his  attack,  together  with 
the  suspended  Papal  excommunication  calling  on  all  Chris- 
tians in  or  out  of  England  to  drive  Henry  from  his 

1  This  opinion  is  also  suggested  by  Mr.  A.  F.  Pollard,  in  his  recent  small 
but  exceedingly  strong  Life  of  Henry  VIII. 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XII,  part  I,  123,  1141.  The  last  reference  reports  that 
the  Pope  does  not  want  Pole  to  take  priest's  orders.  The  reason  for  this  wish 
is  that  he  may  be  ready  to  marry  Mary  and  replace  Henry  on  the  throne. 


222  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

throne,  and  denouncing  upon  the  disobedient  outlawry  in 
this  world  and  damnation  in  the  next. 

Cromwell  had  tried  to  trapan  Pole  and  bring 
him  to  England.  Pole  had  slipped  away  to  Rome, 
and  Cromwell  had  written  him  a  savage  letter,  hint- 
ing "that  ways  might  be  found  in  Italy  to  rid  a  treach- 
erous subject;"  a  threat  that  greatly  alarmed  Pole, 
though  a  careful  review  of  existing  evidence  implies  that 
Cromwell  did  not  try  to  carry  it  out.1  Two  subjects  of 
the  Emperor,  who  were  trying  to  do  precisely  what 
Pole  was  trying  to  do,  stir  up  war  against  their  former 
sovereign,  were  assassinated  in  Italy  by  the  Viceroy  of 
Milan  in  1540,  certainly  with  Charles'  approval,  probably 
by  his  orders.  And  fanatic  zeal  was  soon  to  make  the 
assassin's  arm  a  common  weapon  of  the  great  hatred 
bred  by  disputes  over  religious  opinions.  But  as- 
sassination does  not  seem  to  have  been  Henry's  way. 
Not  because  it  involved  either  treachery  or  cruelty.  He 
shrank  from  those  as  little  as  most  contemporary  sover- 
eigns. But  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  wrote,  two  gen- 
erations after  his  death,  "I  do  not  find  him  bloody  but 
where  law,  or  at  least  pretext  drawn  from  thence,  did 
countenance  his  actions." 

Though  it  is  doubtful  that  Cromwell  tried  to  assas- 
sinate Pole,  he  did  make  every  other  possible  preparation 
to  defend  his  policy  against  assault  from  Rome,  which 
was  using  Pole  as  its  chief  implement.  During  the  year 
1538,  he  renewed  his  attack  on  the  monk,  that  most  char- 
acteristic product  of  the  ancient  world  whose  institutions 
he  was  destroying.  Over  three  hundred  monasteries  had 

1  The  editor  of  the  Letters  and  Papers  thinks  differently. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  223 

been  suppressed  under  the  Act;  two  hundred  friaries  still 
surviving  were  now  swept  away.1 

There  remained  over  two  hundred  large  monastic  es- 
tablishments, which  had  been,  as  a  whole,  excepted  from 
the  charges  of  immorality  presented  against  the  smaller 
ones.  The  abbots  of  some  of  these  were  executed  for 
complicity  in  the  Northern  rebellion;  in  which,  Crom- 
well was  informed,  the  priests  and  monks  were  the  chief 
"doers."  A  process,  not  completed  for  three  years,  then 
began  by  which  the  heads  of  these  large  monasteries  were 
induced  to  surrender  their  establishments  to  the  King. 
The  way  for  this  course  of  action  had  been  opened  by 
the  Act  of  Suppression,  which,  in  addition  to  all  mon- 
asteries under  £200  annual  income,  had  given  to  the 
King  the  property  of  any  which  might  be  granted  to 
His  Majesty  by  their  abbots.  It  looked  for  some  time 
as  if  there  would  be  little  difficulty  in  getting  rid  of 
the  last  corps  of  this  class  of  men,  among  whom  were 
to  be  found  the  most  devoted  adherents  of  the  Pope.  In 
many  monasteries  some  monks  wanted  to  abandon  the 
monastic  life.  Six  of  the  White  Friars  of  Stamford,  for 
example,  signed  a  surrender,  "considering  that  Chris- 
tian living  does  not  consist  in  wearing  a  white  coat  .... 
ducking  and  becking  ....  and  other  like  papistical  cere- 
monies."2 Many  abbots  were  willing  to  take  the  pensions 
or  afraid  to  refuse  surrender.  Most  of  them  doubtless 
simply  yielded  to  the  inevitable. 

But  while  thus  steadily  moving  in  a  policy  which  de- 
stroyed the  centres  of  support  for  any  invasion  to  carry 

1  Gasquet,  Henry  VIII  and  the  Suppression  of  the  Monasteries,  Vol.  II, 
page  239. 

*  Letters  and  Papers,  XIII,  part  2,  565. 


224  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

out  the  bull  of  excommunication  Pole  had  dangled  like 
a  sword  of  Damocles  over  Henry's  head,  Cromwell  was 
watching  for  an  excuse  to  strike  hard  at  a  certain  section 
of  the  nobility  which,  if  the  threatened  blow  fell,  would 
be  still  more  formidable.  These  were  the  Yorkist  nobles, 
the  Marquis  of  Exeter,  Lord  Montague,  Cardinal  Pole's 
elder  brother,  and  Sir  Edward  Neville.  He  was  the 
son  of  Lord  Abergavenny,  whose  father-in-law,  the  Duke 
of  Buckingham,  had  talked  of  his  claims  to  the  throne, 
and  revealed  a  mind  to  renew  the  War  of  the  Roses  if 
the  death  of  Henry  should  leave  the  infant  Mary,  an 
unprotected  little  girl,  as  his  heir.  For  these  incautious 
words  Henry  had  sent  him  to  the  block  in  1521.  This  was 
the  knot  of  nobles — Exeter,  Montague  and  Neville's 
father — which  had  been  pointed  out  to  the  Emperor  by 
his  ambassador  as  able  to  put  20,000  men  into  the  field, 
and  to  be  depended  upon  to  do  so  if  they  were  given  the 
centre  of  an  invading  force.  Cromwell  did  not  know 
this.  But  he  knew  they  were  dangerous  to  his  plans, 
and  he  used  without  the  slightest  scruple  the  first  chance 
to  indict  them  for  treason. 

He  heard  that  a  certain  Hugh  Holland  had  carried 
letters  from  Lord  Montague  to  his  brother,  the  Cardinal. 
Holland  was  arrested  and  carried  to  London.  Sir  Geof- 
frey, the  youngest  Pole,  frightened  out  of  self-control, 
immediately  volunteered  confessions  which  threw  the  net 
around  the  men  Cromwell  wanted.  There  was  no  evi- 
dence of  any  overt  act  of  treason,  but  there  was  stronger 
evidence  of  a  will  to  destroy  the  Tudor  monarchy  than 
that  by  which  Henry  had  executed  Buckingham  seven- 
teen years  before, 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  225 

Executions  because  of  verbal  attacks  on  a  government 
were  not  confined  to  England.  In  1517  the  City  Council 
of  Ulm  executed  a  weaver  in  the  market  place  for  talk- 
ing against  the  Council.1  The  celebrated  Strasburg 
preacher  Geiler  of  Kaysersberg,  who  died  in  1510,  used 
this  argument  in  favor  of  punishing  blasphemy  by  death : 
"If  any  one  speaks  evil  of  the  burgomaster  or  of  a  mem- 
ber of  the  City  Councils  he  is  cast  into  prison  and  does 
not  come  out  except  to  be  hung  or  drowned."  An  insult 
to  God,  he  argues,  ought  to  be  as  severely  punished.2 
And  Claude  Haton  tells  of  a  canon  who  made  scandalous 
remarks  about  Catherine  de'  Medici,  was  arrested  and 
only  escaped  the  law  by  bribery.3 

And  to  read  accounts  of  state  trials  is  to  become  aware 
that  the  modern  presumption  of  the  law  among  English- 
speaking  people,  that  a  man  is  innocent  until  he  is  proved 
guilty,  did  not  obtain  in  trials  for  treason  for  more  than 
five  generations  later.  In  1614  a  manuscript  sermon,  at- 
tacking the  government  and  denouncing  a  death  like  that 
of  Ananias  or  Nabal  for  the  King,  was  found  among  the 
papers  of  Edward  Peacham,  a  rector  of  Somersetshire. 
It  had  never  been  preached.  But,  with  the  approval  of 
Francis  Bacon,  he  was  tortured  to  extract  evidence  of  a 
conspiracy,  tried  and  condemned  to  death  for  treason. 
At  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  Algernon  Sydney 
died  on  the  scaffold  for  opinions  in  an  unpublished  man- 
uscript which  Charles  II  and  a  Tory  jury  thought  dan- 
gerous to  the  monarchy. 

There  was   current   in   England  under   Henry   VIII 

1  Chroniken  der  deutschen  Stadte,  XXV,  78. 

"  L'abbe  L.  Dacheux,  Un  reformateur  catholique  a  la  fin  du  XV*  si£cle. 

8  Documents  inedits.  VIII,  330. 


226  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

a  cant  phrase  to  label  the  attitude  of  those  whose 
opinions  threatened  the  throne.  As  men  spoke  of  the 
malicious  "obstinacy"  of  heretics  who  dissented  from 
the  orthodox  Church,  so  the  adherents  of  the  "new 
world"  in  England  spoke  constantly  of  the  "can- 
kered hearts"  l  of  those  who  longed  for  the  ancient  sys- 
tem in  Church  and  State.  Of  such  "cankered  hearts" 
there  was  good  evidence  in  the  case  of  the  prisoners. 
The  breaking  of  the  power  of  nobles  and  clergy,  a  career 
open  to  talents,  the  revolt  from  Rome,  an  indisputable 
succession  to  the  throne — these  things  were  against  their 
feudal  instincts  and  their  religious  feelings.  "Knaves 
rule  about  the  King,"  Sir  Edward  Neville  was  wont  to 
sing,  "but  lords  shall  rule  again  one  day."  And  Exeter, 
shaking  his  fist,  said,  "I'll  give  these  knaves  a  buffet 
some  day."  Montague  said,  "The  Northern  rebels  were 
fools  to  strike  only  at  the  Council.  They  should  have 
struck  at  the  head."  Letters  had  been  carried  to  Cardinal 
Pole  and  brought  from  him.  At  the  news  of  the  arrest 
some  of  these  had  been  hastily  burned.  "They  liked 
not  the  proceedings  of  the  realm,  they  approved  the 
opinions  of  Cardinal  Pole."  "The  King  will  die  sud- 
denly," said  Montague,  "then  we  shall  have  jolly  stir- 
ring." 2  As  remorselessly  as  they  would  have  killed  him 
and  destroyed  his  work,  Cromwell  had  them  condemned 
for  treason,  executed  in  December,  1538,  and  their  execu- 
tion confirmed  by  Parliament  in  a  bill  of  attainder.  Mon- 
tague's mother  and  Exeter's  wife  were  included  in  the 

1  See  Letters  and  Papers,  passim. 

1  See   the   depositions   against    Neville,    Montague   and   Exeter,    Letters  and 
Papers,  XIII,  part  II. 


THOMAS  CROM3VELL  227 

attainder,  but  they  were  not  touched  during  Cromwell's 
lifetime. 

On  the  I7th  of  December,  1538,  the  long-suspended 
Papal  excommunication,  condemning  Henry  and  all  who 
obeyed  his  magistrates  to  hell,  making  them  outlaws 
and  calling  upon  all  Christians  to  attack  and  despoil  them, 
was  published. 

Cardinal  Pole  was  sent  from  Rome  on  a  mission  to  the 
Emperor  and  the  King  of  France.  It  was  suspected,  in 
spite  of  Pole's  denials,  that  his  errand  was  to  persuade 
them  to  make  peace  and  unite  in  a  crusade  against  Eng- 
land. The  suspicion  was  correct,  as  appears  in  Pole's 
r Apologia?  written  at  the  time,  and  in  Charles'  report 
of  his  conversation  to  the  Venetian  Ambassador.  For 
the  Emperor  told  Mocenigo  that  Pole  tried  to  persuade 
him  to  defer  the  Turkish  expedition  in  order  to  attack 
England,  and  related  his  own  answer,  pointing  out  the 
danger  of  leaving  Italy  open  to  Turkish  attack  if  he  with- 
drew his  forces  to  attack  England.2  Henry  and  Cromwell 
did  not  know  that  Charles  would  take  this  view  of  the 
matter.  In  the  middle  of  1538  they  had  seen  the  war  be- 
tween France  and  Spain  closed  in  a  personal  interview 
of  Charles  and  Francis,  in  which  they  showed  the  most 
pleasant  relations  and  swore  eternal  friendship.  If 
France,  Spain,  Scotland  and  Ireland  should  attack  Eng- 
land she  would  be  ringed  about  by  foes.  Such  a  combi- 
nation in  support  of  a  papal  bull  of  deposition,  though 
difficult  to  form,  was  not  impossible.  The  danger  was 

1  See  Appendix. 

*  This  conversation  is  reprinted  in  The  Emperor  Charles  V ,  by  Edward 
Armstrong,  M.A.,  Vol.  II,  page  21. 


228  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

not  a  paper  one.  The  same  threat  fifty  years  later  ma- 
terialized into  the  great  Armada,  flying  the  banner  of 
a  crusade  and  bringing  a  Spanish  army  to  drive  excom- 
municated Elizabeth  from  her  throne.  The  same  spiritual 
power  gave  its  chief  strength  to  the  Holy  League  and 
compelled  Henry  IV  to  be  reconciled  to  Rome  in  order 
to  gain  peace  for  France.  It  is  not  "reading  history  back- 
ward" *  to  perceive  that  what  caused  and  maintained  war 
in  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  was  capable  of  caus- 
ing it  at  the  beginning  of  the  century.  Contemporaries 
did  not  think  the  danger  imaginary.  The  Spanish  Am- 
bassador writes  from  Venice,  that  it  is  common  talk 
throughout  the  city  that  Spain  and  France  are  to  attack 
England.2  And  the  Venetian  Ambassador  at  Paris  had 
reported  to  the  Senate  some  time  before  that  the  Emperor 
was  disposed  to  obey  the  Pope  by  attacking  England.3 
It  would  have  been  reckless  indeed  for  the  King  and 
his  minister  to  take  this  danger  as  lightly  as  some 
modern  historians  insist  they  ought  to  have  taken 
it.  Henry  wrote  instructions  to  enforce  Cromwell's 
readiness  to  put  England  in  a  state  of  defense,  adding  as 
a  spur  to  his  work,  "Dilligence  passe  sence."  * 

Four  thousand  sets  of  armor  and  supplies  of  powder 
were  bought  in  Germany.  And  the  King  tried  to  engage 
there  100  expert  artillerymen.6  Government  ordered  a 
general  muster  of  the  kingdom,  and  the  rolls  show  that 
it  was  carried  out,  at  least  in  part,  for  Wales  and  two- 

1  William  Stubbs,  D.D.,  The  Study  of  Medieval  and  Modern  History. 
"  Letters  and  Papers,  XIV,  part  I,  372. 
a  Documents  inedits,  Vol.  47,  pte.  71. 
4  Letters  and  Papers,  XIV,  part  I,  529, 
id.,  XIV,  part  II,  App.  14- 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  229 

thirds  of  England.  The  following  entry  in  the  records 
of  the  Corporation  shows  what  the  capital  did :  "His 
Highness  was  lately  informed  that  the  cankered  and  ven- 
omous arch  traitor  Reynold  Pole,  enemy  to  God's  word 
and  his  own  natural  country,  had  moved  diverse  great 
princes  of  Christendom  not  only  to  invade  this  realm  of 
England  with  mortal  war,  but  also  by  fire  and  sword 
to  extermine  and  utterly  destroy  the  whole  generation 
and  nation  of  the  same.  .  .  .  Thereupon  His  High- 
ness in  person  took  many  journeys  toward  the  sea  coasts 
and  caused  many  bulwarks  to  be  made.  He  also  caused 
towers  to  be  built  from  the  Mount  to  Dover  and  so  to 
Berwick.  He  caused  the  Admiral  to  assemble  all  the 
navy  at  Portsmouth,  and  directed  commissions  through- 
out the  realm  to  have  his  people  mustered.  .  .  .  But 
when  the  Lord  Mayor  and  his  brethren  were  informed 
by  Lord  Thomas  Cromwell,  Keeper  of  the  Privy  Seal 
(to  whom  the  city  is  and  has  been  much  bounden),  that 
the  King  himself  would  see  his  loving  subjects  muster 
before  him,  they  decided  that  no  alien,  even  though  he 
were  a  denizen,  should  muster,  and  that  Englishmen  who 
had  jacks,  brigandines  or  coats  of  fence  should  not  go 
out,  but  only  such  as  had  white  harness  and  full  accoutre- 
ments." *  The  parade  took  place  on  the  8th  of  May,  1539, 
and  the  French  Ambassador  estimated  fifteen  thousand 
men  in  the  ranks,  for  those  days  a  large  force. 

The  surrenders  of  the  greater  monasteries  had  stopped 
with  April,  when  two-thirds  of  the  number  had  been  sur- 
rendered, and  from  then  until  the  ist  of  November  they 
did  not  average  one  a  month;  whereas  for  the  previous 

*Ibid.,  XIV,  part  I,  940;  Reprint  from  Archaologia,  XXXII,  30. 


230  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

sixteen  months  they  had  averaged  about  six  a  month. 
And  the  unsurrendered  included  a  number  of  those  most 
dangerous  from  the  Crown's  point  of  view.  There  were 
twenty-five  mitred  Abbots  in  England  with  the  right  to 
sit  in  the  House  of  Lords;  only  seven  of  them  had  sur- 
rendered by  the  ist  of  November,  1539.  And  the  Govern- 
ment had  reason  to  believe  they  were  in  communication 
to  encourage  one  another  in  resistance.  Cromwell  de- 
termined to  break  their  opposition.  After  his  manner, 
he  struck  at  the  tallest  heads.  The  Abbot  of  Glastonbury 
was,  by  virtue  of  his  office,  a  great  noble.  The  broad 
acres  of  the  monastery  lands  were  rated  to  supply  from 
among  their  laborers  and  tenants  twenty-five  hundred 
men  to  the  royal  muster,  and  brought  in  one  of  the 
largest  incomes  in  England.  November  I5th,  1539,  the 
Abbot  was  executed  on  a  charge  of  robbing  the  monastery 
church.  On  the  same  day  the  Abbot  of  Reading  was 
hanged.  Two  weeks  later  the  Abbot  of  Colchester  went 
to  the  gallows.  Both  were  charged  with  treason 
for  having  supported  the  authority  of  the  Bishop 
of  Rome  over  the  King,  desired  the  success  of 
the  Northern  insurrection,  and  wished  Cromwell  and 
the  other  Councilors  at  Rome  or  in  the  North,  i.  e.,  at  the 
stake  or  on  the  gallows.  The  hiding  of  plate  to  keep 
it  from  the  spoiler,  talking  against  the  changes  in  the 
Church  and  the  Councilors  who  made  them,  these  were 
doubtless  being  done  in  most  of  the  monasteries  left  in 
England.  They  do  not  seem  serious  offenses.  But  the 
same  Parliament  which  imposed  the  penalty  of  death  for 
night  fishing  in  a  private  fish  pond,  imposed  the  death  pen- 
alty on  them.  Cromwell,  who  with  all  his  lack  of  scruple 
was  not  inclined  to  bloodshed,  might  have  let  these  of- 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  231 

fenses  go.  But  he  needed  an  example,  and  he  made  it.  So 
far  as  we  can  judge,  the  evidence  of  the  charges  was  quite 
sufficient  to  justify  a  verdict  according  to  the  laws  made 
to  defend  the  revolution  in  England  against  the  plots 
of  those  within  and  without  her  bounds  who  wanted  the 
"Old  World"  again.1 

The  hard  stroke  broke  the  last  resistance  of  the  Orders. 
Within  six  weeks  twenty-nine  monasteries  surrendered, 
among  them  ten  mitred  abbots.  In  another  month  the 
"standing  army  of  the  Pope"  was  entirely  disbanded  in 
England.2 

It  has  been  estimated  that  the  seven  hundred  and  odd 
conventual  establishments  thus  suppressed  yielded  to  the 
royal  treasury  in  gold  and  silver  vessels,  estimated  simply 
at  their  melting  value,  a  sum  equal  to  about  five  millions 
of  dollars.  Of  the  large  quantities  of  jewels  set  in  sacred 
vessels  or  shrines,  no  estimate  can  be  found.  The  sale 
of  monastic  lands  realized  between  forty  and  fifty  mil- 
lions. The  income  of  monastic  estates  during  the  eleven 
years  from  the  beginning  of  the  suppression  to  the  death 
of  Henry  was  between  twenty  and  twenty-five  millions. 
Miscellaneous  profits  amounted  to  some  three  to  four 
millions  more.  The  last  included  the  sale  of  everything 
in  the  monasteries  down  to  the  lead  of  the  roofs. 

1  See  letters  on  the  subject  in  Letters  and  Papers,  Vol.  XIV.  This  judgment 
is  made  after  full  consideration  of  Gasquet's  able  special  pleading  for  the  vic- 
tims. It  is,  perhaps,  needless  to  remark  that  these  laws,  like  most  laws  motived 
by  fear,  were  cruel. 

3  A  justification  of  the  use  in  this  connection  of  this  common  phrase  is  found 
in  the  memoir  which  the  zealous,  orthodox  preacher  Wimpheling  sent  to  Maxi- 
milian in  1510.  He  warns  him  to  be  cautious  in  reforming  the  manifest  abuses 
of  the  church,  lest  "the  mendicant  monks,  those  devoted  servants  of  the  Holy 
See,  should  preach  against  you,  and  the  Pope  should  deprive  you  of  your  crown." 
Hist.  I,it.  de  la  Alsace,  I,  448. 


232  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Cromwell  was  determined  to  make  it  difficult  to  restore 
monasticism.  The  great  churches,  the  stately  buildings 
which  an  Italian  visitor  in  the  beginning  of  the  century 
described  "as  more  like  baronial  palaces  than  monasteries," 
were  carefully  swept  out  of  existence.  From  the  church  of 
Lewes,  four  hundred  and  twenty  feet  long,  supported  by 
pillars  ten  to  fourteen  feet  thick,  to  the  tiny  house  of  Wil- 
ton, with  its  church  thirty-four  feet  by  fourteen,  a  cloister 
twenty-four  feet  long,  a  dortour  sixteen  feet  by  twelve, 
a  little  garden  and  meadow-ground  of  three  acres,  wherein 
dwelt  one  friar,1  all  went  down  in  ruin ;  an  enormous  de- 
struction of  beautiful  creations  of  past  generations.  Of 
the  eight  thousand  monks  and  nuns  supposed  to  have 
lived  in  them,  some  who  were  priests  received  benefices, 
and  about  one-half  were  pensioned.  Abbots  of  large 
monasteries  received,  on  the  average,  from  five  to  six 
thousand  dollars  a  year;  monks,  on  the  average,  about 
three  hundred  a  year.  Heads  of  smaller  houses  got  less, 
ranging  down  to  nine  hundred  dollars  a  year.  Of  the 
fifteen  hundred  friars  and  the  fifteen  hundred  monks 
in  the  smaller  monasteries  who  preferred  going  out  into 
the  world  to  transference  to  larger  houses,  some  received 
a  present  of  from  ten  to  fifty  dollars. 

Henry  was  subject,  like  most  monarchs  of  his  day,  to 
the  vice  of  reckless  extravagance,  and  like  all  selfish  men, 
when  he  needed  money,  he  was  exceedingly  greedy  for  it. 
This  latter  vice  was  exaggerated  by  popular  report.  And 
the  Abbot  of  Colchester  doubtless  expressed  the 
opinion  of  many  when  he  said:  "The  King  and  his 
Councilors  were  driven  into  such  a  covetous  mind  that  if 

»  Letters  and  Papers,  XIII,  part  I,  690. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  233 

the  Thames  flowed  gold  and  silver  it  would  not  quench 
their  thirst."  *  Henry  did  not,  however,  take  the  greater 
part  of  the  vast  profits  of  the  suppression  of  the  monaster- 
ies for  himself.  In  the  many  cases  of  suppressing  monas- 
tic and  ecclesiastical  foundations  during  and  since  the 
sixteenth  century,  the  privileged  or  influential  classes 
have  always  tried  to  make  their  profit  out  of  the  situa- 
tion. On  the  whole,  perhaps  as  large  a  proportion  of 
monastic  property  in  England  was  devoted  to  public  uses, 
as  in  other  suppressions  when  public  opinion  was  un- 
organized and  the  people  powerless  to  control  and  re- 
vise. Henry  used  in  building  and  for  personal  and  house- 
hold purposes  about  twenty  millions  of  dollars.  Four 
or  five  millions  went  in  pensions  and  expenses.  The 
foundations  of  six  new  bishoprics  used  up  five  or  six  mil- 
lions more. 

The  bells  of  the  monasteries  were  melted  into  cannon, 
and  about  forty  millions,  over  half  of  the  royal  profits 
from  the  dissolution,  were  spent  on  the  fleet,  coast  de- 
fenses and  military  preparations  to  resist  the  invasion 
threatened  by  the  papal  excommunication.  Of  the  estates 
of  the  monasteries  the  King  probably  did  not  keep  more 
than  a  quarter.2  He  distributed  the  rest  for  nothing,  or  at 
a  very  low  price,  to  the  ancient  nobility,  to  country  gentle- 
men or  to  the  "new  men"  he  was  raising  to  greatness 
by  his  service.  For  Cromwell's  policy  used  greed  as  a 
factor,  and  his  knowledge  of  human  nature  told  him 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XIV,  part  II,  458. 

*  This  account  is  condensed  from  Father  Gasquet,  who  bases  his  reckoning 
on  books  of  the  Augmentation  Office.  The  sums  are  roughly  transferred  into 
modern  American  values.  It  is  held  by  most  English  writers  that  the  pur- 
chasing value  of  money  was  then  ten  to  twelve  times  what  it  is  now. 


234  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

that  the  sharers  of  the  spoils  would  never  consent  to 
the  reversal  of  that  by  which  they  profited.  From 
the  Dukes  of  Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  the  Marquis  of  Exe- 
ter, etc.,  down  to  the  cooks  in  the  royal  kitchen,  every 
one  scrambled  for  a  share  in  the  spoils. 

Cromwell  took  his  share  with  the  rest.1  He  accumu- 
lated a  great  estate  in  monastery  lands.  Its  exact  value 
cannot  be  estimated,  but  in  rough  numbers  it  brought  him 
in  between  £2000  and  £3500  a  year,  equal  in  purchasing 
value  to  between  $120,000  and  $200,000.  His  income  from 
all  sources  was  large.  In  1536  it  was  between  $130,000 
and  $150,000.  During  the  years  '37,  '38  and  '39  he 
received  what  is  equivalent  to  between  $2,250,000  and 
$2,500,000.  His  expenses  ate  up  more  than  half  this. 
But  his  accounts  show  that  he  invested  some  $600,000  to 
$700,000  in  lands  and  annuities,  and  put  over  $100,000 
into  a  diamond  and  a  ruby,  probably  because  they  were 
portable.  His  steward's  books  show  a  balance  in  his 
favor  of  £7000  ($350,000  to  $400,000  modern  value), 
which  agrees  with  the  account  of  the  ambassador  who 
wrote  at  his  fall  that  people  were  surprised  because  much 
money  was  not  found  in  his  house,  the  total  sum  being 
only  about  £7000. 

Cromwell  made  all  he  could  out  of  his  office  and  in- 
fluence. The  English  of  the  sixteenth  century  seem  to 
have  given  presents  very  much  as  the  modern  Chinese 
do,  and  the  list  of  things  Cromwell  received  is  most 
incongruous.  It  ranges  from  "twenty  apples  good  to 
drink  wine  with"  and  "ten  bags  of  sweet  powder  to  lay 

1  This  summary  account  of  Cromwell's  finances  is  the  result  of  a  careful 
examination  of  all  letters  and  accounts  bearing  on  the  subject  in  Letters  and 
Papers,  checked,  so  far  as  possible,  by  the  Valor  Ecclesiasticus. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  235 

among  cloths,"  through  a  toothpick  and  a  gold  whistle, 
four  live  beavers,  seeds  from  Barbary,  a  complete  Inns- 
bruck harness  and  six  Bibles,  to  a  thousand-weight  of 
tin  to  make  pewter  vessels,  and  18,000  slates  to  roof  his 
new  house.  He  took  fees  and  bribes  very  commonly,  and 
those  possessed  of  any  means  who  asked  his  help  or  in- 
fluence, generally  sent  money  or  a  promise  of  money. 
Sometimes  the  gift  was  delicately  conveyed  in  a  pair  of 
gloves,  left  under  a  cushion  or  elsewhere  in  the  house. 
Much  of  this  would  be  recognized  as  illegitimate  at  the 
time,  for  Sir  Thomas  More,  who  as  Chancellor  astonished 
his  contemporaries  by  refusing  to  take  any  presents,  was 
greatly  praised  for  uprightness.  But  the  condemnation 
was  so  formal  that  people  did  not  lose  caste  by  a  practice 
which  was  universal  and  taken  for  granted.  Wolsey 
received  a  huge  pension  from  Francis  I ;  and  other  nobles 
of  Henry's  Council,  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  the  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  Earl  of  Worcester,  etc.,  Cromwell's  enemies 
as  well  as  his  supporters,  received  pensions  from  the  Kings 
of  France  or  Spain  to  look  after  their  interests.  The 
Councils  of  Switzerland,  Germany  and  Flanders  were 
equally,  if  not  more,  corrupt.  The  Fuggers  were  used 
to  convey  into  Spain  the  foreign  pensions  of  Councilors. 
When  Francis  Bacon,  Chancellor,  was  condemned  in  1621 
for  having  taken  bribes,  he  wrote:  "And  howsoever  I 
acknowledge  the  sentence  just  and  for  reformation  sake 
fit,  I  am  the  justest  Chancellor  that  hath  been  in  the 
five  changes  since  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon's  time"  (I559).1 
Practices  so  deeply  condemned  by  modern  opinion  as  to 
ruin  those  guilty  of  them  persisted  with  small  conceal- 

*Spedding,  Vol.  II,  p.  518.     Boston,  1878. 


236  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ment  and  no  rebuke  among  English  State  officials  into 
the  eighteenth  century.  Pitt  created  a  great  sensation 
and  won  an  unmatched  reputation  for  honesty  in  1746 
by  refusing  to  accept  commissions  on  foreign  subsidies 
or  to  appropriate  the  interest  of  balances  in  his  hands. 
Cromwell's  bribes  and  fees  are  not  in  the  least  to  be 
defended,  but  it  is  unhistorical  to  separate  his  greed  from 
its  background  and  represent  it  as  unusual  in  kind  or 
even  unique  in  degree. 

This  wealth  Cromwell  spent  freely.  He  built  a  stately 
house  opposite  where  the  Stock  Exchange  now  stands  in 
the  heart  of  London.1  The  eight  lots  and  four  gardens 
of  the  building  plot  he  bought  for  the  equivalent  of 
$i;2,ooo  from  his  friend  Antony  Vivaldi.2  The  ward 
was  then  a  good  residence  quarter  on  the  outer  edge  of 
the  city.  The  house,  though  stately,  was  not  one  of  the 
magnificent  palaces  built  in  the  Tudor  age.  A  rough 
sketch  which  has  survived  indicates  the  heavy  square  gate 
tower  common  to  contemporary  architecture ;  a  good  spec- 
imen of  which  can  be  seen  at  Coughton,  the  seat  of  Sir 
Nicholas  Throgmorton,  whose  false  testimony  brought 
Cromwell  to  the  block.  The  building  has  since  been  de- 
stroyed by  fire,  but  we  have  a  description  of  the  interior, 
made  after  Cromwell's  death.  It  had  a  large  banqueting 
hall,  and  ample  kitchens  well  fitted  for  hospitality  on  a 
large  scale.  And  Cromwell  considered  buying  in  Flan- 
ders for  40  crowns  ($500)  a  carved  dinner  table  "of  such 
size  as  there  are  few  in  England."  We  do  not  know 
whether  he  got  it.  But  we  know  that  his  house  was  finely 

1See  description  in  Herbert,  Twelve  Great  Livery  Companies  of  London, 
under  Drapers'  Company. 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  VII,  944. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  237 

furnished  by  one  who  showed  the  tastes  of  the  Renas- 
cence. A  mutilated  list  of  his  furniture  at  the  time  of  his 
death  shows  that  he  had  twelve  pictures.  No  list  of 
his  books  has  survived.  But  there  are  scattered  no- 
tices of  them  among  his  papers  from  the  beginning  of  his 
power,  when  we  find  a  poem,  "Amongst  all  Flowers  the 
Rose  doth  Excel,"  jumbled  up  with  the  "Estimate  of 
charges  of  the  King's  house  for  a  year;"  "A  Dialogue  be- 
tween Pasquillus  and  Marforius"  next  to  "A  list  of  wastes 
done  by  divers  persons  to  the  King's  forests  of  Dean," 
and  Italian  verses  between  the  "Supplication  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  Rompney  Marsh"  and  "The  answer  of  the  King 
of  Denmark  and  his  Secretary."  1 

Cromwell  had  attracted  before  he  became  great  the 
friendship  of  men  of  literary  tastes.  Miles  Coverdale, 
translator  of  the  Bible;  Henry  Morley,  author  of  a 
large  number  of  works  on  Biblical  criticism;  Thomas 
Elyot,  author  of  the  Book  of  the  Governor,  a 
Latin  Dictionary  and  a  number  of  other  books; 
Richard  Morrison,  author  of  several  treatises  and 
translations;  Thomas  Starkey,  one  of  the  best  writers  of 
his  generation  on  affairs  of  church  and  state;  John  Pals- 
grave, who  did  much  for  the  knowledge  of  French  in 
England  and  wrote  one  of  the  earliest  French  grammars 
and  dictionaries — all  these  were  more  or  less  intimate 
with  him  in  his  early  days  of  law  practice.  And  they 
made  a  circle  very  large  in  comparison  to  the  limited 
number  of  literary  men  in  England.  These  and  other 
friends  he  made  before  his  rise  to  power  he  kept  after  he 
became  great. 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  VI,  page  136. 


238  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

The  contemporary  Italian  novelist,  Bandello,  afterward 
titular  Bishop  of  Agen,  made  him  the  hero  of  one  of 
his  tales.  It  presents  Cromwell  in  the  most  odious 
light,  as  a  destroyer  of  the  Church,  who  killed  "an  infinite 
number  of  monks,  decapitated  many  great  prelates  of  the 
holiest  life  and  extinguished  almost  all  the  nobility  of 
England."  But  it  relates  and  praises  his  gratitude  and 
magnificent  liberality  to  a  Florentine  merchant  who  had 
helped  him  in  his  poverty-stricken  youth  and,  having  lost 
his  fortune  by  the  chances  of  trade,  was  in  misery  in  Lon- 
don. The  fact  that  this  Italian  monk,  supporter  of  ortho- 
doxy, chose  the  great  heretic  and  schismatic  for  the  hero 
of  his  tale  on  gratitude,  is  a  proof  that  Cromwell  had  the 
reputation  that  cannot  be  earned  except  by  deserving  it. 
Richard  Morison  wrote :  "You  are  the  only  man  in  your 
place  who  has  never  forgotten  his  old  friends."  1 

Cromwell  entertained  largely,  dining  the  King  and 
foreign  ambassadors.  And  his  varied  and  witty  conver- 
sation added  to  the  pleasure  of  his  guests.  He  kept  a 
large  household  and  took  care  to  have  men  among  them 
who  could  play  on  various  instruments  and  make  up  a 
band.2  He  was  evidently  fond  of  music,  for  his  steward 
paid  a  poor  woman  for  bringing  a  nightingale,  and  "Mr. 
Reynolds'  servant  for  bringing  a  cage  of  canaries,"  sums 
equal  to  over  seventeen  and  twenty-five  dollars.2  He 
kept  a  fool  to  amuse  his  guests,2  and  played  bowls,3  cards 
and  dice,3  losing  at  the  latter  Court  amusements  sums 
ranging  from  $50  to  $1,200.  He  shot  with  the  long  bow 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XIII,  part  I,  1297. 

» Ibid.,  XIV,  part  II,  782. 

8  Ibid.,  VIII,  page  433;  also  above  note. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  239 

and  hunted.  But  his  favorite  sport  was  hawking.1  The 
gifts  that  pleased  him  best  were  hawks,  spaniels  or  grey- 
hounds. The  Spanish  Ambassador  went  out  hawking 
with  him,  to  find  a  good  opportunity  for  a  private  talk, 
and  his  favorite  sport  colored  his  speech,  for  the  ambassa- 
dor reports  that  he  said :  "The  Emperor  and  his  agents, 
like  hawks,  rise  high  to  come  down  faster  on  their  prey."  2 
Just  before  his  fall  Parliament  reenacted  laws  to  prevent 
the  destruction  of  hawks'  nests  and  eggs.  He  kept  nearly 
a  hundred  horses,  but  rode  a  mule  to  and  fro  between  his 
house  and  Court.3  A  bitter  enemy  said  of  him:  "He 
was  a  great  taker  and  briber,  like  his  brother  the  Cardinal 
(Wolsey).  No  lord  or  gentleman  in  England  favors 
him,  because  he  will  do  for  no  man  except  for  money, 
but  he  spent  it  honorably  and  freely  like  a  gentleman 
(though  he  were  none),  and  helped  many  honest  men 
and  preferred  his  servants  well."  4  Nor  was  his  hospital- 
ity limited  to  his  friends.  His  steward's  accounts  show 
many  entries  of  gifts  to  the  poor,  as,  for  instance,  £6  2od., 
equal  to  some  $350,  "to  be  distributed  in  alms  in  the 
prisons  about  London."  And  Stow,  no  friend  of  Crom- 
well, whom  he  thought  guilty  of  an  act  of  injustice  to  his 
father,  says  that  when  a  boy  he  had  seen  more  than  two 
hundred  poor  fed  twice  a  day  at  Cromwell's  gate.5 

Around  the  house  of  Cromwell,  with  its  filled  banquet- 
ing hall  and  open  gates,  there  centred  not  only  friendship 
and  gratitude  but  hatred.  The  hospitalty  which  has  any 

i  Letters  and  Papers,  V,  1281;  VI,  1164,  etc. 

'Ibid.,  XII,  part  II,  629. 

8  Ibid.,  XIV,  part  II,  337. 

'Ibid.,  XIII,  part  I,  471. 

*  Stow,  Survey  of  London,  Ed.  1618,  page  139. 


240  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

of  its  roots  in  extortion  is  apt  to  make  more  enemies  than 
friends.  And  there  were  other  reasons  beside  the  way  in 
which  he  gained  part  of  his  money,  which  suggests  to  us 
how  much  he  was  disliked.  The  sincere  and  intense 
antipathy  of  extreme  conservatives  for  a  radical  and  op- 
portunist, the  malignant  hatred  which  some  members  of 
any  privileged  class  always  feel  toward  the  man  who 
destroys  their  privileges,  the  honest  indignation  of  relig- 
ious men  who  believed  that  the  mediaeval  Church  was 
the  divinely  authenticated  form  of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
on  earth — these  varied  motives  engendered  in  the  hearts 
of  a  large  section  of  the  English  clergy  a  terrible  anger 
against  him. 

The  nobility  also  disliked  Cromwell.     Even  those  who 
may  have  come  to  acquiesce  in  the  Tudor  policy  which 
had  destroyed  their  feudal  independence,  did  not  like  the 
prominent  instrument  of  that  policy.     Almost  all   the 
English  nobles  of  ancient  descent  were  men  of  small 
capacity.    A  paper  is  extant,  found  among  the  archives  of 
the  Papacy,  in  which  some  one  has  given  a  brief  account 
of  the  heads  of  the  English  nobility — probably  as  a  basis 
for  judgment  about  the  possibility  of  exciting  success- 
ful religious  war  against  the  Crown.     It  passes  favorable 
judgments  on  "The  Duke  of  Norfolk,  72  years,  the  chief 
and  best  captain;"  "The  Marquis  of  Exeter,  lusty  and 
of  great  power,  specially  beloved,  diseased  often  with  gout, 
next  to  the  throne,"  and  "The  Marquis  of  Dorset,  26,  witb 
little  or  no  experience,  well  learned  and  a  great  wit." 
But  the  more  characteristic  entries  are:     "The  Earl  of 
Oxford,  66  years,  a  man  of  great  power,  little  wit  and 
less  experience" ;  "The  Earl  of  Derby,  young,  and  a  child 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  241 

in  wisdom  and  half  a  fool" ;  "The  Earl  of  Cumberland,  a 
man  of  50  years,  without  discretion  or  conduct";  "The 
Earl  of  Sussex,  of  little  discretion  and  many  words"; 
"The  Earl  of  Bath,  old  and  foolish";  "The  Earl  of 
Worcester,  young  and  foolish";  "The  Earl  of  Hunting- 
don, of  great  power,  little  discretion  and  less  experience."1 
The  new  nobles  advanced  by  Henry  received  more  favora- 
ble judgment.  "The  Duke  of  Suffolk"  (Henry's  brother- 
in-law),  "a  good  man  and  captain,  sickly  and  half  lame"; 
"The  Earl  of  Wiltshire,  wise  and  little  experienced,  Queen 
Anne's  father";  "The  Earl  of  Hampton  and  Admiral  of 
England,  made  by  the  King,  wise,  active  and  of  good  ex- 
perience ;  one  of  the  best  captains  in  England" ;  "The  Earl 
of  Hertford,  young  and  wise,  brother  unto  the  last  Queen 
deceased."  * 

The  pride  of  an  hereditary  aristocracy  degenerated  in 
ability  often  bears  an  inverse  ratio  to  its  capacity,  and  its 
members  resent  particularly  the  rise  of  capable  men  to  the 
influence  and  positions  once  wielded  by  their  class.  The 
new  blood  which  the  Tudors  infused  into  the  highest 
classes  of  English  society  was  greatly  to  the  advantage 
of  the  English  nobility.  The  families  they  founded  be- 
came the  great  families  of  later  times.  But  the  members 
of  the  played-out  old  lines  did  not  welcome  the  new- 
comers, and  they  hated  Cromwell  more  than  the  rest  be- 
cause his  influence  was  greater,  and  he  was  not  of  gentle 
blood.  Idle  courtiers,  who  could  not  have  led  a  company 
in  war  without  disaster  or  managed  the  simplest  affairs 
of  state  without  confusion,  had  sneered  at  Wolsey  as 
"the  butcher's  dog."  Cavendish  wrote  of  Cromwell  "as 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XIII,  part  II,  738, 


242  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

a  kite  flying  with  royal  eagles,  a  jay  chattering  in  a 
golden  cage."  And  in  the  same  spirit  the  Marquis  of 
Exeter,  forced  from  the  Royal  Council,  had  shaken  his  fist 
at  the  "knaves"  (base-born  men)  "who  ruled  about  the 
King."  The  story,  often  repeated,  that  in  1536  he  struck 
Cromwell  with  his  dagger,  which  was  turned  by  a  secret 
coat  of  mail,  is  not  very  authentic.  Cromwell  may  indeed 
have  worn  a  secret  coat  of  mail.  For  at  the  end  of  1533 
the  Duke  of  Norfolk  had  asked  the  Venetian  Ambassador 
to  get  five  impenetrable  coats,  of  the  kind  made  at  Brescia, 
for  himself,  the  father  and  brother  of  Queen  Anne,  the 
Lord  Treasurer  and  Cromwell.1  They  probably  had 
some  reason  to  fear  a  plot  to  assassinate  them,  though 
there  does  not  appear  to  have  been  any.  And  the  Spanish 
Ambassador  reports  the  delivery  of  five  coats  of  scale 
armor  as  a  present  from  the  Venetian  Senate.2  But 
it  is  highly  improbable  that  the  dagger  of  Exeter  ever  dis- 
covered one  of  these  coats  on  Cromwell's  body.  The  story 
rests  only  on  the  malicious  denunciation  before  a  Somer- 
setshire magistrate  of  the  boastful  words  of  a  butcher,  said 
to  have  been  spoken  six  months  before  they  were  de- 
nounced. But  we  do  not  need  this  anecdote  to  tell  us 
that  most  of  the  nobility,  like  the  orthodox  clergy,  were 
enemies  of  Cromwell  for  reasons  both  good  and  bad. 

It  has  been  so  frequently  repeated  that  Cromwell  was 
generally  hated  because  he  filled  England  with  spies,  that 
it  is  a  little  surprising  to  find  how  slight  ground  for  the 
charge  is  found  in  the  State  Papers.  If  Cromwell  sus- 
tained a  general  spy  system  throughout  England,  or  had 

1  Calendars.  Venetian,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  374,  382. 
*  Calendars,  Spanish,  Vol.  V,  part  I,  page  74. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL'  243 

a  regular  establishment  equivalent  to  the  secret  service 
men  of  modern  governments,  it  would  plainly  appear  in 
their  reports  made  to  him  of  arrests  for  seditious  and 
treasonable  words.  The  ancient  laws  of  England  made 
"tale-bearing"  against  "the  great  men  of  the  realm"  a 
serious  offense.  A  statute  of  Edward  I,1  twice  confirmed 
under  Richard  II,  ordered  the  imprisonment  of  any  one 
repeating  "such  scandalous  reports  until  he  had  brought 
into  court  him  who  was  first  author  of  the  tale,"  to  be 
punished  by  the  Royal  Council.  The  new  law  making  it 
treason  to  call  the  King  heretic,  schismatic  or  infidel,  or 
to  deny  the  legitimacy  of  his  heir  or  impugn  his  title  of 
Head  of  the  Church,  had  commended  to  all  magistrates 
the  enforcement  of  the  old  as  well  as  the  new  law.  I  have 
examined  in  the  Calendars  reports,  made  to  Cromwell 
between  1533  and  1540,  of  ninety  odd  arrests  under 
these  laws,  practically  all  that  exist.  In  none  of 
them  is  there  any  suggestion  of  a  system  of  spies  to 
watch  the  people  or  report  their  incautious  words.  A 
King's  commissioner,  a  yeoman  of  the  Crown,  a  commis- 
sioner of  subsidy,  each  report  one  case;  several  county 
magistrates,  evidently  seeking  to  curry  favor,  report  a 
few  cases ;  in  five  cases  a  constable  or  bailiff  seems  to  be 
the  chief  accuser.  Even  this  does  not  indicate  any  "spy 
system."  And  the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  cases 
are  denunciations  before  the  local  magistrates  by  ordinary 
inhabitants  of  town  or  village — tinkers,  ironmongers, 
fullers,  weavers,  butchers,  etc.  They  show  that  numbers 
of  the  people  throughout  England  believed  in  the  laws  or 
were  freely  willing  to  use  them.  Some  fifteen  or  twenty 

1  III,  Edward  I,  34. 


244  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

cases  are  the  denunciations  of  parsons  by  their  parish- 
ioners, who  evidently  want  an  incumbent  of  the  "New 
Learning."  In  ten  cases  priests  denounce  another  priest. 
This  also  probably  was  the  "New  Learning"  against  the 
"Old  Learning."  Some  ten  cases  look  like  simple  mali- 
cious false  witness  growing  out  of  a  quarrel ;  and  most  of 
these  are  so  commented  upon  by  the  magistrates  who  re- 
port them.  The  examination  of  these  hundred  cases  is 
very  far  from  suggesting  the  presence,  or  the  need,  of  a 
body  of  spies  to  keep  down  the  people. 

In  the  year  1540  Cromwell  suddenly  fell  before  his 
enemies.  April  I7th  he  was  made  Earl  of  Essex;  July 
28th  he  was  beheaded.  He  had  long  foreseen  his  mis- 
fortune. He  told  the  Spanish  Ambassador  in  1536.  "He 
had  admitted  to  himself  that  the  day  might  come  when 
fate  would  strike  him  as  it  had  struck  his  predecessors  in 
office;  then  he  would  arm  himself  in  patience  and  place 
himself  for  the  rest  in  the  hands  of  God."  x  During  the 
year  1540,  Cromwell's  foreign  policy  had  brought  him 
into  disfavor  with  his  master  for  two  reasons.  It  crossed 
the  theological  beliefs  of  the  King  and  it  made  him  per- 
sonally uncomfortable. 

Cromwell  prepared  to  resist  the  possible  foreign  in- 
vasion in  support  of  the  Papal  bull  excommunicating 
Henry,  not  only  by  fortifications  and  musters,  but  also 
by  alliances.  Against  a  combination  of  France  and  Spain, 
England  must  obviously  seek  allies  in  the  North.  Crom- 
well did  his  best  to  form  an  alliance  with  the  anti-imperial 
and  anti-Catholic  princes  of  Germany.  In  this  he  found 
one  practically  insurmountable  obstacle — the  theological 

1  Calendars,  Spanish,  V,  part  II,  p.  82. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  245 

differences  between  the  Lutheran  and  English  Churches. 
Most  of  the  Lutheran  divines  received  from  Luther  him- 
self a  great  tenacity  of  theological  opinions  and  a  strong 
intolerance  for  dissent.  They  had  refused  to  join  a  de- 
fensive league  with  the  Zwinglians;  many  of  them  were 
to  refuse  fellowship  with  the  Reformed  of  France.  After 
examining  the  doctrines  of  the  English  Church,  they  ad- 
vised their  princes  not  to  make  alliance  unless  the  Eng- 
lish accepted  the  true  Word  of  God — namely,  the  formulas 
of  the  Lutheran  Church.  But,  far  from  doing  that,  an 
Act  of  Parliament  in  June,  1539,  made  the  Six  Articles 
the  test  of  religious  orthodoxy  in  England.  These  de- 
nounced the  penalty  of  death  against  all  who  spoke  or 
wrote  against  transubstantiation,  communion  in  one  kind, 
the  need  of  celibacy  in  the  clergy,  the  perpetual  obligation 
of  monastic  vows,  private  masses  or  auricular  confession. 

For  some  years  Cromwell  had  been  encouraging  in 
England  the  spread  of  Lutheran  opinions.  Between  1536 
and  1539  two  books  were  printed  containing  The  Augs- 
burg Confession  and  Melanchthon's  Apology,  "trans- 
lated by  Richard  Ta vernier  at  the  commandment  of  Lord 
Thomas  Cromwell."  He  had  not  only  licensed  Cover- 
dale's  translation  of  the  Bible,  but,  as  he  told  the  French 
Ambassador,  spent  six  hundred  marks  (equivalent  to 
some  $20,000)  in  getting  it  printed.  It  finally  appeared 
in  1539  with  Cromwell's  arms  upon  the  title-page,  and 
a  Preface  setting  forth  a  "Summary  and  Content  of 
Scripture"  quite  Protestant  in  tone.1  He  must  have  used 

1  In  the  title-page  of  the  subsequent  editions  under  the  royal  patronage  the 
arms  of  Cromwell  have  been  cut  out  of  the  plate,  leaving  a  blank  in  the  en- 
graving. See  copies  in  the  British  Museum. 


246  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

his  influence  to  promote  clergymen  of  anti-orthodox  opin- 
ions, for  the  heretical  Bishop  Latimer  wrote  him  in  the 
end  of  1538,  saying:  "Your  Lordship  has  promoted 
many  more  honest  men  since  God  promoted  you  than  any 
of  like  authority  have  done  before  you."  1 

By  the  beginning  of  1539  Cromwell  was  re- 
garded by  all  who  wished  to  see  England  ad- 
vance rapidly  toward  the  position  taken  by  the 
Protestant  princes  of  Germany  or  the  Zwinglian 
cantons  of  Switzerland  as  the  hope  of  "the  gospel"  in 
England.  Their  opinion  of  him  may  be  fairly  represented 
(making  due  allowance  for  the  tone  usual  in  prefaces 
to  patrons)  by  the  dedication  of  Richard  Morison's 
Apomaxis,  published  in  the  middle  of  1538:  "Who 
that  knows  anything  is  ignorant  that  all  things  depend 
on  you?  Who  does  not  wonder  at  your  bodily  strength, 
broken  by  no  labours?  It  is  incredible  that  the  strength 
and  memory  of  one  man  can  suffice  for  so  many  and 
such  divergent  affairs.  You  receive  all  suppliant  let- 
ters, you  hear  all  complaints,  you  send  few  from  you 
without  help,  either  in  the  trouble  itself  or,  next  best, 
by  counsel.  Is  there  any  one  distinguished  by  virtue 
or  learning  or  any  of  unusual  mental  powers  whom  you 
have  not  aided?  All,  except  very  few,  gladly  see  con- 
quered and  bound  by  you  Popes,  heaps  of  indulgences, 
pounds  of  lead,  wax  easily  moulded  to  evil  (Papal  seals), 
a  thousand  stratagems  of  fraud,  huge  armies  of  rapine 
and  finally  the  bodyguards  of  Papal  rule — Force,  Terror, 
Cruelty,  Flames,  Threats,  Thunders — captive,  sad  and 
hopeless,  following  the  triumphant  chariot. 

1  Litters  and  Papers,  XIII,  part  II,  1036. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL 


247 


"May  Christ  long  keep  you  safe  to  ornament  our  state 
and  make  plain  our  gospel." 

How  far  Cromwell  was  moved  by  conviction  in  thus 
promoting  Protestant  opinions  is  difficult  to  determine. 
His  early  literary  friends,  with  the  exception  of  Lord  Mor- 
ley,  had  moved  toward  heresy  as  well  as  schism,  and 
Cromwell  may  have  moved  with  them.  In  any  case  we 
may  assume  that  he  thought  more  of  England  than  of 
theology.  Probably  he  concluded  that,  if  England  was 
to  be  kept  from  connection  with  Rome,  she  must  not 
only  break  with  the  mediaeval  Papacy,  but  also  with  some 
doctrines  of  the  scholastic  theology,  for  the  two  hang 
so  closely  together  that  it  is  hard  to  separate  them.  And 
he  understood  that  if  any  permanent  alliance  was  to 
be  formed  in  Germany,  some  concession  must  be  made 
to  the  doctrinal  prepossessions  of  the  Lutherans. 

Now  the  King  was  not  at  all  inclined  to  rapid  diver- 
gence from  old  theological  opinions.  He  piqued  himself 
on  his  knowledge  of  theology.  He  hated  Luther,  who, 
in  controversy  some  years  before,  had  handled  him  with- 
out gloves.  And  he  was  so  adverse  to  heresy  that  Crom- 
well had  not  been  able  in  1531  to  get  him  to  have  any  deal- 
ings with  Tyndale,  in  spite  of  the  strong  support  to  theo- 
ries of  absolute  power  given  to  kings  by  God  contained  in 
Tyndale's  book.  In  protecting  men  who  held  opinions 
denounced  by  the  Act  of  Six  Articles,  Cromwell  was  play- 
ing the  dangerous  part  of  forcing  the  hand  of  the  King,  a 
thing  which  Henry  always  deeply  resented. 

In  addition,  Cromwell's  policy  had  made  Henry  un- 
comfortable, and  that  had  come  to  be  in  his  eyes  the 
worst  possible  offense.  To  cement  the  German  alliance, 
Henry,  a  widower  since  1537,  had  married  Anne,  sister 


248  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

of  the  Duke  of  Cleves,  whose  rich  and  fertile  domains  in 
the  Rhine  country,  on  the  borders  of  the  Netherlands 
and  Germany,  made  him  a  sort  of  diplomatic  centre  for 
any  anti-imperial  European  alliance.  Before  Cromwell 
came  Into  power  the  advantages  of  marriage  into  this  fam- 
ily, whose  eldest  daughter  was  wife  of  the  Elector 
of  Saxony,  head  of  the  defensive  League  of  Lutheran 
Princes,  had  been  laid  before  the  King  in  a  memorial  of 
Herman  Ring  (May,  1530).  The  King  had  been  told 
that  Anne  was  very  beautiful  and,  satisfied  with  the 
reports  and  a  portrait  painted  by  Holbein,  had  agreed 
to  the  marriage.  When  she  came  to  England,  a  glance 
made  plain  that  she  was  not  at  all  beautiful.  The 
King  at  first  sight  took  a  great  dislike  to  her,  and 
tried  hard  to  get  out  of  keeping  his  promise  to 
make  her  his  wife.  Cromwell  pointed  out  how  im- 
possible this  was,  and  he  reluctantly  went  through  the 
ceremony.  But  woe  to  the  man  who  forced  him  to  do 
what  he  disliked.  An  intense  irritation  gathered  in  his 
heart.  And  the  desire  to  get  rid  of  Anne  was  increased 
by  his  liking  for  Katherine  Howard,  a  pretty  young  niece 
of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk.  Gardiner,  Bishop  of  Winches- 
ter, head  of  the  orthodox  clerical  party  and  Cromwell's 
bitterest  opponent,  gave  the  King  opportunity  to  meet 
Anne's  rival  in  his  palace.1  Cromwell  was  aware  of  his 
danger,  but  saw  no  way  to  avoid  it.  Sir  Thomas  Wrio- 
thesley,  one  of  the  King's  secretaries,  deposed  that  five 
months  after  the  marriage,  "He  asked  Lord  Cromwell 
to  devise  some  way  for  the  relief  of  the  King,  for  if  he 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XVI,  page  114,  and  Letters  from  Richard  Hillis,  Zurich 
Lttters,  Vol.  I,  page  200. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  249 

remained  in  this  grief  and  trouble  they  should  all  one  day 
smart  for  it  To  which  Lord  Cromwell  answered  that  it 
was  true,  but  it  was  a  great  matter.  'Marry,'  said  Sir 
Thomas,  'I  grant,  but  let  the  remedy  be  searched  for.' 
'Well,'  said  Lord  Cromwell,  and  broke  off." 

The  French  Ambassador  perceived  that  a  fight  for  the 
control  of  the  state  had  begun.  The  party  of  reaction, 
with  Gardiner  and  Norfolk  as  its  leaders,  and  the  radical 
progressive  party,  under  Cromwell,  had  locked  arms  for 
a  battle  to  the  death.  The  orthodoxy  of  Henry,  his  dis- 
like for  Anne,  his  growing  passion  for  pretty  Katherine 
were  strong  cards  held  by  Gardiner.  But  Cromwell  was 
an  old  player  and  it  looked  for  a  moment  as  if  he  would 
win.  On  the  ist  of  June,  the  French  Ambassador  reports 
the  Bishop  of  Chichester  in  the  Tower  on  a  charge  of 
treason  and  adds :  "A  trustworthy  person  says  he  heard 
from  Cromwell  that  there  were  still  five  bishops  who 
ought  to  be  treated  thus,  whose  names,  however,  cannot 
yet  be  learned ;  unless  they  are  those  who  lately  shook  the 
credit  of  Master  Cromwell  so  that  he  was  very  near  com- 
ing to  grief.  Things  are  brought  to  such  a  pass  that 
either  Cromwell's  party  or  the  Bishop  of  Winchester's 
must  succumb.  Although  both  are  in  great  authority 
and  favour  of  the  King,  their  master,  still  the  course  of 
things  seems  to  incline  to  Cromwell's  side,  as  Winches- 
ter's chief  friend,  the  Bishop  of  Chichester,  is  down."  * 

On  the  /th  of  June  the  Bishop  of  Chichester  wrote  to 
Cromwell  a  letter  from  the  Tower  showing  an  inclination 
to  be  used  against  the  leaders  of  the  clericals.1  Then  the 
frightened  opposition  struck  a  blow  which  they  must  have 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XV,  pages  351,  360. 


250  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

plotted  some  days  before.  On  the  loth  of  June  Crom- 
well was  arrested  for  treason  at  the  meeting  of  the  Royal 
Council. 

He  recognized  in  an  instant  that  the  ground  was 
countermined  beneath  his  feet  by  some  false  but  plausible 
witness.  A  charge  of  treason  against  Cromwell,  who 
lived  to  exalt  the  throne,  was  ridiculous.  As  he  saw  his 
work  undone  by  the  tricky  but  incapable  Norfolk  and  the. 
able  but  reactionary  Winchester,  he  flung  his  cap  on  the 
ground  in  sudden  wrath,  appealing  to  their  consciences 
whether  he  was  a  traitor,  and  bidding  them  not  let  him 
languish  long  in  prison.  The  French  Ambassador  under- 
stood it  perfectly  as  a  faction  fight  "between  this  King's 
ministers  who  are  trying  to  destroy  each  other.  Crom- 
well's party  seemed  the  stronger  lately,  but  it  seems  quite 
overthrown  by  the  taking  of  the  said  Lord  Cromwell, 
who  was  chief  of  his  band."  J  The  King  sent  the  am- 
bassador word  that :  "He  wished  by  all  possible  means  to 
lead  back  religion  to  the  way  of  truth.  Cromwell,  as 
attached  to  the  German  Lutherans,  had  always  favored 
the  doctors  who  preached  such  erroneous  opinions,  and 
that  recently,  warned  by  some  of  his  principal  servants  to 
reflect  that  he  was  working  against  the  instructions  of  the 
King  and  the  Act  of  Parliament,  he  said  that  the  affair 
would  soon  be  brought  to  such  a  pass  that  the  King 
with  all  his  power  could  not  prevent  it,  but  rather  his 
own  party  would  be  so  strong  that  he  would  make  the 
King  descend  to  the  new  doctrines  even  if  he  had  to  take 
arms  against  him."  2 

The  King's  irritation,  caused  by  dislike  for  Anne  and 

»  and  «  Letters  and  Papers,  XV,  766,  767. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  251 

liking  for  Katherine,  had  increased,  while  at  the  same 
time  the  peace  of  the  Duke  of  Cleves  with  the  Emperor, 
and  a  truce  between  Charles  and  the  French  King  made 
Henry  fear  that  the  marriage  he  hated  was  a  political 
mistake.  His  distaste  for  heresy  deepened.  And  at  the 
psychological  moment,  when  the  unconscious  dislike  for 
the  minister  who  had  been  the  means  of  making  him  un- 
comfortable was  ready  to  burst  into  the  fury  of  a  selfish 
man  who  is  crossed,  a  sudden  false  accusation  evoked  the 
terrible  pride  of  the  King.  Rich,  Chancellor  of  the  Court 
of  Augmentations,  and  Nicholas  Throgmorton,  with 
whom  Cromwell  had  long  been  at  odds,  accused  him  of 
having  said  two  years  before :  "If  the  King  would  turn 
from  it  (the  promotion  of  the  Protestant  doctrine),  yet  I 
would  not  turn;  and  if  the  King  did  turn  and  all  his 
people,  I  would  fight  in  the  field  in  mine  own  person  with 
my  sword  in  my  hand  against  him  and  all  others."  They 
added  that  he  pulled  out  his  dagger  with  the  words :  "Or 
else  this  dagger  thrust  me  to  the  heart,  if  I  would  not  die 
in  that  quarrel  against  them  all." 

To  have  desired  insurrection  against  the  Crown  was 
against  all  Cromwell's  ideas,  to  have  plotted  a  hopeless 
rebellion  was  utterly  at  variance  with  his  sagacity,  to 
have  expressed  his  intent  before  a  personal  enemy  like 
Throgmorton  was  a  lack  of  caution  impossible  in  one  who 
had  so  long  walked  with  firm  step  the  slippery  corridors 
of  Henry's  palaces.  A  son  of  Cromwell's  grandchild 
informed  Fuller  that,  when  told  by  Rich  and  Throgmor- 
ton that  he  had  an  accuser  of  want  of  fidelity,  he  had 
replied,  "Were  he  here  now  I  would  strike  my  dagger  into 
his  heart." 


252  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Cromwell  might  have  said  this.  He  was  not  fool 
enough  to  have  said  the  other  before  such  witnesses,1 
even  in  the  highly  improbable  event  of  feeling  it.  Like 
Sir  Thomas  More,  Cromwell  accused  Rich  of  plain  per- 
jury. 

Whether  distortion  or  sheer  invention,  the  false 
witness  served  its  purpose.  The  King  at  once 
believed  it,  though  later  he  came  to  think  it  false. 
Cromwell  had  forced  him  into  a  hated  marriage.  He 
had  encouraged  heresy  when  the  King  loved  orthodoxy. 
Henry  had  unconsciously  wanted  an  excuse  for  a  nervous 
discharge  of  rage  which  might  relieve  his  irritated  ego- 
tism. He  stripped  his  favorite  of  all  his  dignities,  and 
every  incapable  scion  of  a  noble  house  In  England  rejoiced 
that  the  "base  knave"  who  had  risen  to  the  head  of  the 
English  Government,  because  he  was  the  most  capable 
man  of  affairs  in  it,  was,  in  accordance  with  royal  edict,  to 
be  spoken  of  as  "the  shearman."  The  contemporary 
chronicler  tells  us  that  "many  lamented"  his  arrest,  but 
"more  rejoiced,  and  especially  such  as  had  been  religious 
men  or  favored  religious  persons,  for  they  banqueted  and 
triumphed  together  that  night,  *  *  *  and  some, 
fearing  lest  he  should  escape  although  he  were  impris- 
oned, could  not  be  merry.  Others,  who  knew  nothing 
but  truth  by  him,  both  lamented  him  and  heartily  prayed 
for  him."  A  Spaniard  long  resident  in  London,  who 
thought  Cromwell  "had  better  never  been  born,"  wrote  of 
his  execution:  "He  was  brought  forth  with  a  thousand 
halberdiers  as  a  revolt  was  feared,  and  if  all  who  formerly 

*  H«  had  been  on  bad  terms  with  Throgmorton,  and  he  knew  perfectly  the 
part  Rich  had  played  in  the  conviction  of  More. 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  253 

wore  his  livery  and  called  themselves  his  servants  had 
been  there  they  might  easily  have  raised  the  city,  so  be- 
loved was  he  by  the  common  people."  * 

At  the  Courts  of  France,  Spain  and  Rome  the  news  of 
his  fall  was  received  with  great  joy,  which,  curiously 
enough,  has  been  taken  by  some  modern  writers  as  an 
indication  of  the  injury  his  ministry  had  done  to  England. 
From  France  came  accusations  apt  to  insure  his  death — 
that  he  had  plotted  to  marry  the  Princess  Mary  and  seize 
the  Crown.  No  pretense  was  ever  made  of  sending  the 
promised  proofs  when  the  King  asked  for  them  after 
Cromwell's  death. 

From  that  death  nothing  could  save  him.  For  many 
generations  later  little  stood  between  a  fallen  minister  and 
the  scaffold.  A  threat  of  the  axe  was  the  ancient  equiva- 
lent of  a  vote  of  want  of  confidence.  From  Wolsey,  who 
died  on  his  way  to  death,  the  list  is  long  of  fallen  rulers 
of  England  who  saw  the  scaffold  on  their  path.  More, 
Cromwell,  Norfolk,  Seymour  of  Sudeley,  Somerset, 
Northumberland,  Norfolk,  Buckingham,  Strafford, 
Charles  I,  Sir  Henry  Vane,  Clarendon,  Danby,  Shaftes- 
bury  and  the  Councilors  of  James  II,  all  met  death  or 
looked  hard  upon  the  axe.  During  a  century  and  a  half, 
on  the  average,  once  in  ten  years  a  leader  of  the  English 
state  died  on  the  scaffold  or  was  in  danger  of  it.  None 
of  these  men,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Northumber- 
land, could  be  convicted  or  attainted  of  treason  by  a 
modern  jury  or  Parliament.  Cromwell  was  therefore 
only  one  in  a  long  list  of  those  who  came  to  the  steps  of 

*A  chronicle  of  Henry  VIII  of  England,  translated  by  M.  A.  S.  Hume. 
London,  1889. 


254  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  scaffold  by  the  violence  of  English  political  parties. 

He  understood  that  his  one  hope  of  mercy  lay  in  the 
will  of  the  King,  and  tried  by  the  most  abject  efforts  to 
placate  the  diseased  egotism  he  knew  so  well.  It  was  his 
last  card  in  the  game  of  life,  and  he  played  it  with  the 
same  lack  of  dignity  which  his  antagonist,  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk,  head  of  the  English  aristocracy,  showed  when 
his  turn  came.  Cromwell  got  nothing  by  his  abject  ap- 
peal, except  that  the  title  and  estates  were  left  undisturbed 
to  his  son,  which  was,  perhaps,  all  he  hoped. 

The  men  of  the  sixteenth  century  often  died  better  than 
they  lived.  There  is  no  particular  reason  to  doubt  the 
essential  authenticity  of  Cromwell's  prayer  on  the  scaffold, 
in  which  he  humbly  repents  of  all  his  sins,  trusting  in  the 
mercy  of  God,  and  asking  that  the  righteousness  of  Christ 
might  hide  and  cover  all  his  unrighteousness.  Those  sins 
were  many.  But,  to  put  his  career  against  the  back- 
ground of  his  times,  and  look  at  it  with  the  eyes  of  a  man 
who  believes  in  God  and  righteousness  rather  than  with 
those  of  an  ecclesiastic  who  believes  that  the  world  gets 
at  God  and  righteousness  only  by  a  church  establishment, 
is  to  see  that  there  was  in  them  no  peculiar  tinge  of  sinister 
wickedness.  He  was  the  most  active  servant  the  Tudors 
found  in  destroying  mediaeval  institutions.  He  stood  for 
a  career  open  to  talents  and  the  energies  of  England,  go- 
ing out  in  the  light  of  the  new  learning  and  the  new  pa- 
triotism, into  those  paths  of  thought,  of  industry,  of  ad- 
venture, which  have  brought  the  men  who  speak  the  Eng- 
lish tongue  into  their  inheritance.  Therefore  the  distant 
North  and  the  ancient  nobility  hated  him.  But  those  who 
knew  him  best  liked  him  most.  His  gratitude  was  pro- 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  255 

verbial.  Prosperity  did  not  make  him  forget  the  friends 
of  his  adversity.  He  struck  without  scruple  at  those  who 
opposed  his  plans,  but  he  did  not  willingly  shed  blood 
which  seemed  needless,  and  he  helped  many  of  the  weak. 
He  took  bribes  and  sold  his  influence,  but  it  is  nowhere 
recorded  of  him  that  he  ground  the  faces  of  the  poor. 
He  did  not  die,  like  Wolsey,  unlamented.  He  was  "be- 
loved of  the  common  people."  His  arrest  had  been  secret 
and  sudden  because  of  fear  of  trouble  in  the  city.  His 
scaffold  was  guarded  to  prevent  a  rescue.  A  war  of 
broadside  ballads  arose  over  his  death  which  had  to  be 
suppressed  by  the  council.1  The  joy  at  Madrid,  Paris  and 
Rome  was  broken  by  laments  from  Germany  and  the 
Netherlands  over  the  deeds  of  "the  English  Nero"  and 
the  martyrdom  of  the  friend  of  "the  Gospel."  For  in 
those  days  nobody  judged  a  man  by  what  he  was  or  what 
he  did,  but  by  his  attitude  toward  their  faction  in  religion 
and  politics.2 

It  was  easier  for  the  King  to  get  rid  of  a  good  servant 
than  to  find  another.  Wolsey,  More  and  Cromwell  were 
the  ablest  men  he  raised  to  high  office  in  the  State.  With- 
in a  year  of  Cromwell's  death,  the  Spanish  Ambassador 
wrote :  "The  King  has  no  confidence  in  his  ministers,  and 
sometimes  even  reproaches  them  with  Cromwell's  death, 
saying  that  upon  light  pretexts,  by  false  accusation,  they 
made  him  put  to  death  the  most  faithful  servant  he  ever 
had."  3  The  last  part  of  Henry's  reign  was  the  least  suc- 
cessful. He  began  to  shed  blood  which,  from  any  point 

1  Publications  of  Society  of  Antiquaries,   London. 

1  It  is  impossible  to  write  the  history  of  the  sixteenth  century  fairly  until 
this  fact  is  more  clearly  and  widely  recognized  than  it  has  been. 
8  Letters  and  Papers,  XVI,  590,  page  285. 


256  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

of  view,  was  superfluous,  so  that  the  French  Ambassador 
reports :  "Cromwell  was  reckoned  the  sole  deviser  of  the 
death  of  so  many  people,  but  it  appears  since  that  he  was 
not  altogether  author  of  that  piteous  tragedy,  but  rather 
played  his  part  as  it  was  rehearsed  to  him."  *  No  one 
could  be  found  to  manage  the  English  finances.  The  de- 
basement of  the  coinage,  continued  during  Henry's  reign 
before  Cromwell  came  to  power,  suspended  as  long  as  he 
had  influence,  went  on  again  worse  than  ever,  until  Eliza- 
beth made  her  generation  pay  for  the  mistakes  of  their 
forefathers  by  returning  it  to  purity  and  beginning  to 
build  up  again  the  ruined  credit  of  England.2 

Cromwell  left  no  account  of  his  motives  and  no  descrip- 
tion of  his  policy.  He  shed  without  remorse  the  blood  of 
men  who,  if  they  could  have  gained  the  power  they  asked 
the  Spanish  King  and  the  Italian  Pope  to  help  them  gain, 
would  have  killed  him  without  an  instant's  hesitation  and 
thought  it  God's  service  to  destroy  all  his  work.  He  in- 
creased by  every  means  the  power  of  the  throne,  because, 
in  common  with  many  of  the  ablest  statesmen  and  writers 
of  the  age,  he  believed  an  absolute  prince  to  be  the  only 
security  for  national  peace  and  national  prosperity.  But 
he  did  not  try  to  strengthen  the  throne  by  creating  a  stand- 
ing army  or  disarming  the  people.  He  defended  his  policy 
by  the  pulpit  and  the  printing  press.  He  used  the  arts  so 
long  familiar  to  English  ministers  to  manage  Parliament, 
but  he  appealed  to  the  consent  of  the  nation  through  it, 
and  increased  the  potential  of  liberty.  He  broke  Eng- 
land from  all  connection  with  the  Papacy.  He  fostered 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  XVI,  page  289. 

*  Schanz  Englische  Handelspolitik,  etc.     Vol.  II,  Abtheilung,  II,   IVt 


THOMAS  CROMWELL  257 

the  Renascence  against  medievalism,  the  New  Learning 
against  the  Old  Learning.  He  reduced  the  Welsh  and 
Scotch  borders  to  order.  He  helped  the  destruction  of 
local  jurisdictions  and  made  it  possible  to  bring  them  un- 
der the  common  law.  He  maintained  the  stability  of  the 
succession  by  a  policy  which  defended  the  loyalty  to  the 
throne  that  carried  England  through  the  sixteenth  century 
without  a  great  civil  war.  He  finished  the  breaking  of  the 
feudal  nobility,  eager  to  renew  the  War  of  the  Roses,  and 
kept  the  path  open  to  talents.  He  aided  trade,  retrieved  the 
finances  and  stopped  the  adulteration  of  the  coinage.  He 
swept  monasticism  from  England  as  an  anachronism 
which  had  outgrown  its  usefulness,  and  used  half  its 
wealth  for  national  purposes.  He  broke  the  temporal 
power  of  the  clergy  and  put  the  national  Church  under  the 
same  control  as  all  other  national  affairs. 

Much  of  this  is  so  opposed  to  certain  theories  of  Church 
and  State  that  it  seemed  to  their  advocates  a  diabolical 
work,  even  as  it  seemed  to  their  opponents  a  blessed 
work.  The  truth  is  that  Thomas  Cromwell  was  neither 
martyr  of  Protestantism  nor  Satan's  agent  to  attack  the 
Church;  but  a  statesman  working  hard  to  give  England 
an  efficient  government,  and  to  guide  her  safely  during 
the  difficult  transition  from  the  mediaeval  to  the  modern 
state.  Close  mouthed  and  unscrupulous  as  he  was,  there 
was  nothing  particularly  mysterious  about  his  methods 
nor  uniquely  sinister  about  his  personality.  He 
sought  to  advance  his  own  fortune,  but  evidently  he 
had  larger  aims.  Surely  labors  so  consistent  and  efficient 
must  have  been  inspired  by  some  other  motive  and  reason 
than  the  greed  of  a  crafty  adventurer  flattering  a  tyrant, 


258  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

And  if,  without  theological  prejudice  or  ecclesiastical  bias, 
we  judge  him  for  what  he  was,  a  person  whose  ideals 
were  predominantly  secular,  we  find  him  morally  neither 
better  nor  worse  than  the  average  man  of  his  age ;  if  we 
judge  him  by  what  he  did,  it  seems  difficult  to  deny  him  a 
place  among  the  most  capable  statesmen  of  all  ages. 


IV 
MAXIMILIAN  I 

The  map  of  the  present  Empire  of  Austria  shows  at  a 
glance  that  it  consists  in  the  main  of  three  quite  distinct 
lands.  The  first  is  a  group  of  seven  provinces  containing 
the  Alpine  ranges  east  of  a  line  drawn  from  the  Lake  of 
Constance  to  the  Lake  of  Garda.  Tirol,  the  most  moun- 
tainous of  these  provinces,  extends  toward  the  west  be- 
tween Italy  and  Bavaria  and  is  shaped,  to  the  complaisant 
imagination,  somewhat  like  the  handle  of  the  figure  of  the 
spade  on  a  playing  card.  At  the  eastern  extremity  of  Tirol, 
the  border  of  the  Empire  runs  sharply  north  and  south  and 
the  six  other  provinces  of  this  group  cover  the  foothills 
until  they  reach  the  banks  of  the  Danube  on  the  north 
and  the  lowlands  on  the  east.  The  figure  of  the  spade  is 
completed  chiefly  by  two  provinces, — Hungary,  a  vast  low 
plain  stretching  from  the  edge  of  the  Alps  to  the  Car- 
pathians and  drained  by  the  Danube;  Bohemia,  a  high 
plain  sending  its  waters  by  the  Elbe  toward  the  north- 
west. The  distinction  between  this  low  plain  drained  into 
the  Black  Sea,  this  high  plain  drained  into  the  North  Sea 
and  this  mountain  land  to  the  south  and  west,  is  made 
more  marked  by  a  glance  at  the  names  of  the  towns  on 
the  map.  In  Tirol  and  the  provinces  which  cover  the 
Alpine  foot-hills,  they  are  German.  In  Hungary,  they 
are  for  the  most  part,  Magyar.  In  Bohemia,  two-thirds 

259 


260  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

of  them  are  Czech,  for  the  population  of  this  triple  empire 
is  about  a  quarter  German,  a  half  Slav  and  a  quarter 
Magyar. 

The  combination  of  these  three  lands  under  the  power 
of  one  ruler  whose  descendants  took  the  name  and  state 
of  Emperor  of  Austria,  was  to  a  great  extent  the  work 
of  Maximilian  I,  Duke  of  Austria  from  1493-1519.  And 
at  the  same  time  that  he  assured  to  his  descendants  the 
base  for  the  future  Empire  of  Austria  in  the  east,  his 
matrimonial  diplomacy  won  for  them  in  the  west  the 
provinces  of  the  Netherlands,  the  crown  of  Spain,  South 
America  and  the  dominant  influence  in  Italy.  Thus,  east 
and  west,  he  saw  his  two  grandsons,  Charles  and  Fer- 
dinand, heirs  of  a  vast  group  of  possessions  artificially 
combined  by  war  and  dynastic  marriages. 

Between  these  two  groups  of  the  possessions 
of  the  House  of  Hapsburg,  lay  the  German  Em- 
pire, to  whose  crown  Maximilian  was  elected.  Its 
position  and  population  destined  it  to  be,  not  an 
artificial  state,  bound  together,  merely  by  the  right  of 
its  head  to  rule  the  several  parts,  but  a  real  state,  resting 
on  the  desire  of  its  people  to  have  a  common  organ  to 
work  out  the  national  destiny,  a  supreme  ruler  who  might 
incarnate  common  aspirations.  But  it  was  three  hundred 
and  fifty  years  after  the  death  of  Maximilian  before  the 
Germans  living  in  the  plains  and  valleys  draining  into  the 
North  and  Baltic  Seas,  became  a  nation.  It  is  hardly  fair 
to  say  that  the  blame  for  the  weakness  of  Germany  lies 
at  the  door  of  the  Emperor  Maximilian  in  the  same  sense 
that  the  credit  for  the  splendor  of  the  dynasty  of  the 
Hapsburgs  must  be  given  to  him.  True,  he  seemed  to 


MAXIMILIAN  I  261 

have  a  great  opportunity,  for  he  was  chosen  as  leader  of 
the  Germans  at  a  time  when  all  classes  of  the  people 
wished  a  reformation  of  the  Empire,  an  anachronism  too 
much  affected  by  modern  conditions  to  remain  mediaeval 
and  too  mediaeval  to  be  easily  transformed  into  a  modern 
state.  But  the  hearts  that  turned  towards  him  were  not 
single.  Great  numbers  of  Germans,  however  much  they 
might  talk  about  the  glory  of  Germany,  were,  when  the 
test  came,  willing  to  barter  for  a  mess  of  pottage  mingled 
of  local  pride  and  petty  jealousy,  their  national  birthright. 
The  task  his  office  laid  upon  him  was  perhaps  too  hard 
for  any  man  to  accomplish,  but  not  too  hard  for  any  man 
to  try.  And  Maximilian  did  little  that  was  wise  or  effi- 
cient to  unify  the  inchoate  confederacy  of  the  Empire  into 
a  German  nation.  When  his  interests  as  hereditary  Duke 
came  into  conflict  with  the  advantages  of  Germany,  he 
set  no  example  of  self  sacrifice.  He  turned  his  craft,  his 
energy,  his  skill  into  the  channels  of  dynastic  gain.  He 
never  poured  them  out  with  manifest  devotion  for  the 
good  of  Germany.  And  to  read  through  the  mass  of 
his  writings  and  letters,  is  to  receive  an  ineffaceable  im- 
pression that  he  would  rather  have  been  the  forefather  of 
a  splendid  dynasty  than  the  ruler  of  a  nation  whose  great- 
ness narrowed  the  limits  of  the  power  of  his  house.  To 
one  in  whose  mind  the  interests  of  a  nation  take  precedence 
of  the  interests  of  a  dynasty,  it  seems  that  Maximilian 
gained  his  dearest  desire  at  the  expense  of  his  plainest 
duty. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  however,  that  this  was  a  con- 
scious dereliction.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  had  re- 
ceived a  smattering  of  the  new  ideas  which,  during  his 


262  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

lifetime,  were  spreading  from  Italy  over  Europe,  Maxi- 
milian always  remained  in  his  tastes  and  instincts  a  man 
of  the  old  order.  Whenever  the  superficial  polish  of  his 
humanism  was  scratched,  the  knight  of  the  fourteenth 
century  showed  beneath.  When  egotism  plunged  him 
into  war,  he  always  fought  with  a  good  conscience  for  his 
"rights,"  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  it  ever  crossed  his 
mind  that  any  who  opposed  him  might  have  had  wrongs. 

When  he  acceded  to  the  Empire  in  1493,  he  had  vic- 
toriously defended  the  great  possessions  of  his  son  against 
France  on  the  west  and  reconquered  the  lands  of  his 
father  from  Slav  and  Magyar  on  the  east.  When  he  died 
a  quarter  of  a  century  later  he  was  a  pathetic  figure  with- 
out influence  or  authority.  His  grandson,  Charles,  was 
manifestly  to  become  the  most  powerful  ruler  Europe  had 
seen  for  seven  hundred  years,  but  for  Maximilian  himself, 
the  founder  of  this  greatness, — there  was  none  to  do  him 
reverence. 

And  the  last  state  of  the  German  Empire  was  worse 
than  the  first.  Her  soil  was  ready  for  the  seeds  of  the 
selfish  greed  of  petty  dynasties  and  the  brutal  hatred  bred 
by  controversy  over  religious  opinions.  The  ruler  Maxi- 
milian's policy  had  left  for  the  Empire,  was  too  busy 
managing  Spain  and  the  Netherlands  and  Italy  to  meet 
these  evils  with  an  eye  single  to  German  interests.  They 
sapped  the  very  roots  of  patriotism,  and  finally  a  century 
after  Maximilian's  death,  the  harvest  of  the  dynastic  pol- 
icy of  the  Hapsburgs  was  reaped  by  the  German  people 
as  it  had  before  been  reaped  by  the  Spaniard,  the  Dutch- 
man and  the  Italian.  The  sense  of  German  brotherhood 
was  lost  in  thirty  years  of  savage  civil  war.  While  from 


MAXIMILIAN  I  263 

every  side  greedy  adventurers,  Slav  and  Magyar,  Swede, 
Dane,  Dutchman,  Englishman,  Frenchman,  Spaniard, 
Italian  and  Swiss,  poured  into  the  German  Empire  for 
plunder  and  bloodshed. 

The  causes  of  this  splendid  success  and  this  marked 
failure,  are  not  all  to  be  found  in  Maximilian's  capacity 
and  character,  and  his  success  is  due  more  to  himself  and 
less  to  fate  and  circumstance  than  his  failure.  A  great 
mass  of  literary  work  helps  one  who  can  read  between  the 
lines,  to  estimate  his  ability  and  perceive  his  purposes,  and 
the  light  his  writings  throw  upon  his  deeds,  seems  to  show 
that  his  weaknesses  conspired  with  circumstances  to  work 
out  failure  and  his  capacities  moulded  events  to  lead  to 
triumphs.  This  brief  sketch  attempts  to  set  what  he  did 
against  the  background  of  what  he  was. 

Maximilian's  mother  was  Eleanor,  Princess  of  Portu- 
gal. At  the  time  of  his  birth  in  1459,  his  father,  Fred- 
erick III,  Duke  of  Austria,  had  been  for  nineteen  years 
Emperor  of  the  German  Empire,  an  honour  to  which  he 
was  chosen  by  the  electors  after  the  death  of  his  distant 
cousin,  Albert  II.  Frederick  III  prized  the  title  of 
Emperor,  for  he  clutched  at  every  mark  of  distinction 
with  an  ambition  which  seemed  more  like  an  avarice  for 
dignities  than  a  desire  for  power.  But  nothing  except  a 
powerful  personality  wielding  great  resources  could  make 
the  office  anything  but  a  splendid  burden  of  anxieties. 
The  bonds  of  the  mediaeval  Empire  were  decayed  and  no 
new  ones  took  their  place.  "The  Holy  Roman  Empire 
of  the  German  Nation"  gave  its  Emperor  neither  a  treas- 
ury nor  an  army.  There  was  no  common  law  and  no 
force  to  impose  order  upon  a  large  class  of  people  who 


264  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

deemed  plundering  and  killing  for  private  revenge  a  right 
of  freeborn  Germans.  The  imperial  crown  brought  to 
him  who  wore  it  no  power  to  fulfil  its  duties.  He  must 
either  neglect  the  tasks  for  which  it  stood  or  rely  for  their 
accomplishment  on  his  own  resources.  Frederick  chose 
the  easier  way  of  neglect.  For  Frederick  always  took  the 
line  of  least  resistance,  except  when  he  showed  the  ob- 
stinate tenacity  of  a  turtle  which  seizes  something  it 
wants  and  then  retires  so  far  as  possible  into  its  shell. 

Even  with  the  desire  to  rule  the  Empire,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  he  would  have  had  the  capacity.  He  could  not 
remain  master  of  his  own  hereditary  dominions,  and  at 
two  years  of  age  the  infant  Maximilian  was  shut  up  in 
Vienna  besieged  by  his  uncle.  The  first  memories  of  the 
child  thus  cradled  in  the  lap  of  war  with  cannon  shots  for 
lullabies,  were  of  the  hardships  and  perils  of  a  soldier. 
In  later  years  Maximilian  often  recalled  a  second  siege  he 
endured  in  the  castle  of  Vienna.  The  boy,  charmed  by 
the  noise  of  the  cannon,  ran  out  to  join  his  father  who 
was  overseeing  repairs  to  the  walls,  and  the  huge  stone 
of  a  bombard,  breaking  at  that  moment  through  the  re- 
pairs, barely  missed  both.1  The  coarse  bread  to  which 
even  the  Emperor  and  Empress  were  reduced,  was  very 
distasteful  to  the  pampered  lad.  He  begged  his  mother 
with  tears  for  something  nice.  Word  of  the  little  prince's 
distress  reached  a  young  man  from  Transylvania,  a  stu- 
dent of  the  University  in  the  insurgent  city,  and,  at  the 
peril  of  his  life,  he  smuggled  into  the  ditch  around  the 
fortress  some  partridges  and  other  game.  Thence 

1  Latin  Autobiography  Jahrbucher  der  Kunst  historischen  Sammlungen.  Vol. 
VI,  page  423  (35). 


MAXIMILIAN  I  265 

he  was  drawn  up  into  the  castle  by  a  rope  and  gave  his 
dainties  to  the  young  prince.1  Maximilian,  as  grateful 
for  benefits  as  he  was  unforgetful  of  injuries,2  rewarded 
and  always  remembered  the  kindness. 

The  boy's  thoughts  and  ambitions  all  turned  toward 
war.  The  glimmer  of  armor  and  weapons  was  the  first 
thing  that  drew  his  attention  and,  while  still  in  his  nurse's 
arms,  whenever  he  saw  a  dagger  he  cried  until  he  could 
touch  it  with  his  hand.  His  favourite  playthings  were 
little  figures  of  jousting  knights,  two  of  which  are  still  to 
be  seen  in  the  New  Museum  at  Vienna.3  When  he  was 
larger  he  begged  successfully  for  some  play  cannon.  Re- 
fused ammunition,  he  formed  a  conspiracy  with  one  of 
his  comrades  to  steal  it.  The  two  lads  smuggled  it  out 
of  the  powder  magazine  in  folds  of  their  clothes,  crammed 
the  play  cannon  to  the  mouth  and  were  ready  for  a  grand 
celebration.  Their  smutted  faces  excited  the  suspicion 
of  an  attendant,  the  celebration  was  suppressed  and,  as 
Maximilian  afterwards  thought,  his  life  was  saved.4 

So  much  in  love  was  he  with  the  life  of  a  soldier  and 
hunter  that  it  was  hard  to  get  him  to  stick  to  his  book. 
He  hung  around  the  stables  and  took  fencing  lessons  from 
the  guards.  He  organized  the  boys  of  the  court  into 
opposing  bands  and  fought  mimic  battles.  Sometimes, 
fetching  a  horse  from  the  stables,  he  led  a  wild  band  of 
youngsters  in  and  out  through  the  courts  and  even  the 

1  Cuspinian  Opera,  page  602. 

2  Alberi  Relazioni  degli  ambasciatori  Veneti  al  Senato.     Firenze,  1839.     Serie 
I,  VoL  VI,  page  27. 

•Reproduced  in  Jahrbucher  der  Kunsthistorischen  Sammlungen,  etc.,  Vol. 
XIV,  page  10.  Also  shown  in  a  picture  of  his  boyhood  made  by  Maximilian's 
order  for  Weiss  Kunig  and  reproduced  in  Vol.  VI  with  that  work. 

4  Latin  Autobiography  Jahrbucher  der  Kh.  S.,  etc.,  Vol.  VI,  page  423. 


266  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

halls  of  the  castle.  He  slipped  his  hounds  on  the  cats 
and  calves  and  his  father's  pet  animals.  Nothing  short 
of  threats  of  a  sound  thrashing  would  break  him  of  a 
persistent  fancy  for  stalking  the  castle  chickens  with  bow 
and  arrows.1 

The  lad  promised  to  be  worthy  of  the  name  Maximilian, 
which  was  given  him  in  the  hope  that  he  might  unite  the 
skill  and  success  of  Fabius  Maximus  and  Paulus  ^Emilius.2 
And  in  all  the  exercises  which  became  a  knight,  Maxi- 
milian developed  considerable,  in  some,  remarkable  skill. 
An  able  horseman  he  could  hold  his  own  with  other  princes 
in  contests  of  the  tournament,  though  one  does  not  find, 
outside  of  his  own  books  or  poems  written  to  please  him, 
a  record  of  his  supreme  skill  in  those  dangerous  games. 
He  could  drive  the  shaft  of  an  arrow  without  any  iron  on 
it  through  two  finger  breadths  of  larch  plank.3  One  of 
his  captains  tells  how,  finding  the  Nuremberg  contingent 
drawn  up  for  exercise  and  review  during  the  Swiss  war, 
the  Emperor  got  off  his  horse  and  beat  all  the  gun  masters 
in  shooting  with  the  cannon.4  He  was  a  noted  hunter, 
killed  huge  boars  single  handed  with  the  sword  and  fol- 
lowed the  chamois  to  the  topmost  crags.  And  in  all  these 
accomplishments  he  used  brains  as  well  as  strength  and 
skill.  Like  the  great  Italian  soldier  of  fortune,  Jacopo 
Sforza,  he  appreciated  the  danger  of  a  hard-mouthed 

1  Grunpeck  Die  Geschichte  Friedrichs  III  und  Maximilian  I.  Geschicht- 
schreiber  der  Deutschen  Vorzeit.  Zweite  Ausgabe  Fiinfzehntes  Jahrhundert. 
Band  3,  page  40. 

1  Weiss  Kunig,  page  49. 

•Weiss  Kunig,  page  86. 

*  Pirkheimer  Schweizer  Krieg.  Herausgegeben  von  Karl  Ruch.  Munchen, 
1896. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  267 

horse  and  invented  a  new  bit.1  When  someone  who  knew 
that  he  supervised  the  stables  himself  asked  him  why  he 
did  not  leave  things  to  his  master  of  horse,  Maximilian 
answered, — "A  nail  holds  the  shoe,  a  shoe  holds  a  horse, 
a  horse  holds  a  man,  a  man  holds  a  castle,  a  castle  holds  a 
land,  a  land  holds  a  kingdom."  a 

He  had  a  knowledge  of  casting  cannon  and  invented 
several  types  of  guns.3  He  practised  powder  making  and 
showed  an  armorer  in  Innsbruck  how  to  fit  a  new  sort  of 
screw  to  a  cuirass.4  He  was  never  content  to  stupidly 
follow  accepted  methods  but  tried  eagerly  and  often  suc- 
cessfully to  improve  them.  As  a  boy  he  seems  to  have 
been  less  apt  at  his  books.  At  the  age  of  twenty-seven 
he  spoke  to  the  Reichstag  at  Frankfort.  His  father  was 
very  much  astonished  at  his  ability,  and  said  to  those 
around  him,  "I  don't  know  how  he  can  read  or  talk  Latin 
for  certainly  at  the  age  of  twelve  years  I  was  afraid  he 
would  turn  out  either  a  mute  or  a  fool."  6 

Maximilian  himself  had  mingled  memories  of  his  first 
learning :  When  a  man  he  wrote  to  Innsbruck  asking  to 
have  the  Latin  grammar  he  used  as  a  boy,  found  and  sent 
to  him  together  with  his  blank  book  of  Latin  exercises,6 
but  he  had  a  severe  judgment  for  his  first  teacher.  One 
of  his  biographers  says  he  heard  him  wish  Peter  were 
alive  and  he  would  make  him  repent  of  having  been  a 

1  Cuspinian,  page  614.  The  elder  Sforza  brought  up  his  more  celebrated  son, 
afterwards  Duke  of  Milan,  on  three  precepts.  One  was,  "Never  ride  a  hard- 
mouthed  horse." 

•Weiss  Kunig,  page  106. 

*  Max.  I  vertraulicher  briefwechael  mit  Sigmund  Pruschenk.  von  Krauss 
Innsbruck,  1875.  page  90. 

4  Jahrbucher  der  Kh.  Samm.,  «tc.,  Vol.  XIII. 

E  Cuspinian,  page  602. 

«  Jahrbucher  Kh.  S.,  etc.,  Vol.  I,  part  2,  XXXVII. 


268  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

bad  teacher.  "We  owe  much,"  the  Emperor  continued, 
"to  good  tutors  but  bad  tutors  ought  to  be  soundly 
thrashed  for  making  us  waste  the  precious  hours  of  youth 
and  teaching  us  what  it  takes  great  pains  to  unlearn."  l 

In  later  years  he  made  up  for  his  early  sluggishness 
and  his  mind  became  active  like  his  body. 

The  influence  of  the  Renascence  was  just  beginning  to 
reach  Germany  at  the  time  of  Maximilian's  birth.  By  the 
time  he  became  a  youth  new  ideals  were  influencing  meth- 
ods of  education.  The  time  was  drawing  near  when  all 
the  strongest  German  students  were  to  look  longingly  to- 
ward Italy  as  the  promised  land  of  scholars ;  an  Eldorado 
of  learning  where  new  and  untold  treasures  were  to  be 
found.  Already  the  suspicion  was  rife  that  a  better 
training  than  the  traditional  one  was  to  be  had  and 
that  it  was  useful  to  those  who  were  born  to  wealth  and 
station.  Princes  and  rich  merchants  who  had  travelled 
began  to  desire  this  "New  Learning"  for  their  sons  in- 
stead of  the  "Old  Learning"  of  the  scholastics. 

Maximilian  did  not  receive  a  training  in  this  New 
Learning  according  to  the  Ideals  of  its  advocates,  the 
humanists — such  a  training  as  Lorenzo  de'  Medici  had 
for  example.  At  eighteen  Commines  thought  him  very 
badly  educated.  A  better  Latin  was  of  course  a  most 
intimate  sign  of  the  New  Learning  as  opposed  to  the  Old. 
Guarino,  Vittorino  da  Feltre,  or  any  good  Italian  master 
of  the  new  school,  would  never  have  sent  Maximilian  out 
capable  of  composing  the  Latin  he  dictated.  For  to  get 
away  from  what  poets  and  court  scholars  wrote  about 
Maximilian's  Latin  and  read  it,  is  to  see  at  once  that  "a 

1  Cuspinian,  page   602. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  269 

more  perfect  monk's  Latin  could  not  be  conceived."1  But 
though  Maximilian  did  not  receive  a  humanist  education, 
his  quick  mind  was  much  affected  by  the  stirring  in  the  air 
of  thought  which  the  Italian  Renascence  was  producing 
in  Germany.  The  most  unmixed  triumph  of  his  life 
was  his  management  of  the  University  of  Vienna.  He 
reorganized  it  so  as  to  subject  it  to  his  own  control,  put 
men  of  the  New  Learning  into  many  of  the  chairs  and  left 
it  at  his  death  with  five  thousand  students  and  a  very  high 
reputation  for  scholarship.2  And  the  account  of  his  educa- 
tion given  in  Weiss  Kunig  shows  plainly  that,  from  the 
time  when  he  abandoned  the  cloddish  attitude  of  his 
boyhood,  the  widening  of  the  circle  of  human  interests 
which  produced  the  New  Learning  and  was  fostered  by  it, 
appealed  with  constantly  increasing  force  to  his  mind. 
These  influences  did  not  change  Maximilian.  He  always 
remained  a  mediaevalist  and  never  became  a  man  of  the 
Renascence.  The  name  "last  of  the  knights,"  applied 
to  him  is  open  to  no  objection  except  that  there  were 
many  more  like  him  long  after  his  death.  The  result  of 
the  education  he  worked  out  for  himself  was  to  graft  into 
the  stock  of  that  mediaeval  mind,  producing  by  its  chief 
thoughts  results  like  those  of  his  ancestors,  some  bizarre 
fruits  of  the  New  Learning,  and  to  stimulate  in  him  that 
thirst  for  every  and  any  sort  of  distinction,  which  was 
the  dominant  passion  of  the  men  of  the  Italian  Renas- 
cence. 

Throughout  his  whole  life  Maximilian  hated  idleness. 
When  he  was  not  working  or  actively  playing  he  was 

1  Hermann  Klaje.     Die  Schlacht  bei  Guinegate.     Griefswald,  1890. 
*  Aschbach   Geschichte  der  Wiener  Universitat,  etc.     Wien,  1865. 


270  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

learning.  He  took  an  interest  in  everything  with  an 
energy  which  suggests  restlessness  and  perhaps  accounts 
for  some  of  his  shortcomings.  A  restless  mind  lacks  grip 
and  trains  itself  away  from  the  patient  reflection  which 
makes  a  man  wise  and  efficient. 

Whether  Maximilian  suffered  from  over  activity  or  not, 
certain  it  is  that  out  of  his  hatred  of  idleness  there  came  a 
versatility  worthy  of  note  even  in  a  generation  noted  for 
versatile  men.  To  inventive  skill  in  mechanic  arts  he 
added  competence  as  a  draughtsman.  He  was  proud  of 
his  ability  to  design  mummeries  or  costume  dances,  in 
which  he  delighted  to  join.  He  left  a  record  of  his  suc- 
cess in  managing  the  kitchen  and  the  preparation  of  great 
banquets.  He  planned  over  one  hundred  books1  on  every 
possible  subject  from  prayer  to  fencing  and,  with  the  as- 
sistance of  his  secretaries,  wrote  thirty.  He  attended  to 
the  details  of  the  work  of  his  councilors  until  he  drove  at 
least  one  of  them  to  the  verge  of  distraction.2  It  is  said 
he  could  talk  to  the  captain  of  his  mercenaries  in  Wend- 
ish,  Flemish,  English,  Spanish,  French  and  Italian,  and 
dictate  letters  to  his  scribes  in  several  languages  at  once. 
A  number  of  letters  written  in  French  to  his  daughter 
Margaret  have  survived,  and  if  his  other  languages  were 
no  better  than  his  French,  his  captains  must  sometimes 
have  found  him  hard  to  understand.  But  it  was  a  time 
when  a  little  knowledge  of  a  foreign  language  went  a  long 
way,  and  Maximilian's  linguistic  accomplishments  were 

1  See  the  account  of  various  MSS.  notes  and  memorandums  of  Maximilian 
in  Das  Fischereibuch  Kaiser  Max.  I.  Dr.  Michael  Mayer.  Innsbruck,  1901, 
page  1,  note  b. 

•Pruschenk  vertraulicher  brief wechsel,  etc.  Letter  from  Cyprian  von 
Serntein  to  Paul  von  Liechtenstein. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  271 

perhaps  as  sound  as  those  of  most  of  the  princely  prodigies 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  Germany  possessed  no  capital 
and  her  Emperor  no  palace.  Therefore,  these  activities 
of  mind  and  body  were  interpolated  among  ceaseless  jour- 
neys, and  the  energy  they  implied  survived  the  hardships 
of  repeated  campaigns. 

Maximilian's  active  career  as  a  governor  and  leader  of 
men,  began  in  his  nineteenth  year  with  his  marriage  to 
Mary  of  Burgundy.  Her  father,  the  Duke  of  Burgundy, 
had,  by  inheritance,  marriage  and  conquest,  joined  a  num- 
ber of  territories  to  form  a  triangular  principality  based 
on  the  North  Sea  and  driven  like  a  wedge  between  France 
and  Germany.  He  created  a  fine  army  and  planned  to  dis- 
member France  and  become  the  dominant  ruler  of  Europe ; 
king  of  a  state  reaching  from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Medi- 
terranean; father  of  a  dynasty  more  powerful  than  his 
cousins,  the  Valois.  A  medievalist,  he  could  not  foresee 
the  conditions  of  a  modern  state  and,  when  in  three  bat- 
tles against  the  Swiss  he  annihilated  his  army  and  lost  his 
life,  the  elements  of  his  future  great  kingdom  threatened 
to  dissolve  at  once. 

His  daughter  Mary,  was  at  her  father's  death  in  1477, 
twenty  years  old.  The  richest  heiress  in  Europe,  her 
hand  had  been  sought  by  many  suitors.  Two  months  be- 
fore his  death,  her  father  had  written  to  her  that  he  had 
promised  her  hand  to  Maximilian,  and  already  the  duchess 
had  given  him  her  heart.  The  young  couple  had  never 
met,  but  they  exchanged  pictures,  and  it  was  noted  by  the 
Duchess'  attendants  that  she  took  her  medallion  out 
twenty  times  a  day  to  look  at  it.  The  death  of  her  father 
added  a  heavy  burden  of  trouble  to  the  rich  dowry  of 


272  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Mary.  Louis  XI,  King  of  France,  was  her  father's  rival 
and  bitter  enemy.  On  the  ground  that  the  King  of 
France  was  her  feudal  overlord,  he  claimed  the  right  to 
appoint  her  bridegroom,  announced  that  she  must  marry 
the  dauphin,  and  proceeded  to  seize  the  Burgundian  cities. 
The  burghers  of  the  Netherland  cities  had  been  heavily 
taxed  by  Mary's  father  to  support  the  army  with  which 
he  served  his  boundless  ambitions.  They  refused  to 
continue  to  pay  the  old  rates,  and  demanded  the  restora- 
tion of  certain  rights  of  self  government  which  had  been 
forcibly  taken  from  them,  extending  them  for  better  'de- 
fense in  the  future.  Mary,  left  without  the  means  to  con- 
tinue her  father's  tyranny,  was  obliged  to  grant  their  de- 
mands. The  helpless  girl  immediately  became  the  center 
of  intrigues  woven  by  greedy  men  who  wanted  her  dowry. 
The  King  of  England  pressed  the  suit  of  his  brother-in- 
law.  The  King  of  France  bribed  two  of  her  ambassa- 
dors to  back  the  cause  of  his  son.  The  council  of  Ghent 
promptly  condemned  them  to  death  for  falsehood  and 
treason,  and  their  heads  fell  on  the  scaffold  in  spite  of 
Mary's  earnest  plea  for  mercy.  Then  the  burghers  tried 
to  force  Mary  to  marry  Duke  Adolf  of  Cleves. 

If  Maximilian  wanted  his  bride,  it  was  the  hour  for 
action.  But  never  in  his  whole  life  did  Maximilian  move 
quickly  in  great  affairs.  That  Hapsburg's  unwillingness 
to  reach  a  sharp  decision  and  express  it  in  action,  appear- 
ing in  his  father  Frederick  III,  noticeable  in  his  grandson, 
Charles  V,  reaching  the  point  of  disease  in  the  slow  mov- 
ing great  grandson  Philip  II,  beset  Maximilian.  On  the 
second  of  April,  1477,  Frederick  III  issued  a  call  to  the 
Princes  of  the  Empire  to  meet  at  Easter  and  follow  his 


MAXIMILIAN  I  273 

son  to  the  Netherlands.  The  lagging  lover  had  just  re- 
ceived this  letter  from  his  promised  bride.  It  was  brought 
by  a  messenger  whom  he  had  sent  back  to  Mary  with  a 
jewel  and  a  request  for  her  colours  to  wear  on  his  hel- 
met : — "My  dear  and  friendly  lord  and  brother, — I  greet 
you  from  my  whole  heart.  .  .  .  You  must  not  let 
yourself  doubt  that  I  will  yield  obedience  to  the  arrange- 
ments made  between  us  by  my  lord  and  father,  now  in 
glory,  and  will  be  to  you  a  true  wife,  and  I  do  not  doubt 
that  you  will  do  the  same.  The  bearer  will  tell  you  how 
I  am  hemmed  in  and  God,  may  He  give  us  both  what 
our  hearts  desire,  knows  that  I  cannot  talk  to  him  as  I 
would  like.  I  beg  you  not  to  remain  away — because  of 
the  comfort  and  help  you  can  bring  to  my  lands  when  you 
come — and  if  you  don't  come,  my  lands  can  expect  no 
help  or  aid  from  you — because  I  may  be  compelled  to  do 
things  that  I  should  never  want  to  do  because  I  am  forced 
to  do  them  and  abandoned  by  you."  On  the  twenty-first 
of  April  there  was  a  marriage  by  proxy,  but  still  the  hus- 
band did  not  come,  though  the  children  in  the  street 
cried  out  "Emperor,  Emperor,"  and  demanded  their  prince 
Maximilian  to  save  them  from  French  conquest.  At  last 
in  the  end  of  May  the  Prince  was  under  way  for  the 
journey.  Two  months  later  he  had  not  gotten  beyond 
Cologne.  Two  causes  helped  this  delay.  The  sluggish- 
ness of  the  princes  of  the  Empire  in  fulfilling  their  duties 
and  Maximilian's  lack  of  money.  His  rich  bride  sent 
money  to  meet  him  at  Cologne  and  at  last  followed  by 
three  of  the  Electors  and  many  of  the  princes  and  nobles, 
he  set  off  on  a  slow  ride  of  eighteen  days  across  the  low- 
lands to  Ghent, 


274  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

The  city  received  him  with  ceremony  and  enthusiasm. 
Fifteen  hundred  white  clad  burghers  met  him  in  stately 
procession  carrying  two  banners  inscribed — "Thou  art  our 
Prince  and  our  leader,  fight  our  battle,  and  all  that  thou 
sayest  we  will  do."  Mary,  standing  at  the  head  of  the 
palace  steps,  received  him  with  a  kiss  as  he  ascended  by 
torchlight.  At  five  o'clock  the  next  morning  Maximilian, 
in  silver  armour,  rode  again  into  the  castle.  In  the  chapel 
his  bride  met  him.  She  was  clad  in  damask  embroidered 
in  gold,  and  girt  with  a  golden  girdle  set  with  jewels.  She 
wore  a  little  ermine  cloak  over  her  shoulders  and  a  rich 
golden  purse  hung  at  her  waist.  On  her  head  was  the  ducal 
crown  of  Burgundy  blazing  with  jewels.  A  papal  legate 
read  mass.  Then  he  took  a  bite  from  a  baked  cake  and 
Maximilian  and  Mary  divided  and  ate  it.  Then  they  both 
drank  from  the  same  beaker  of  red  wine  and  stood  man 
and  wife. 

The  bride  whom  politics  had  brought  to  Maximilian, 
won  an  empire  over  his  heart  she  never  lost.  This  is  the 
way  he  describes  her  and  his  own  life  in  a  letter,  written 
four  months  after  marriage,  to  his  comrade  left  behind  in 
Vienna : —  "I  have  a  pretty,  virtuous  wife  that  I  am  sat- 
isfied with  and  give  God  thanks.  She  is  as  tall  as  the 
Laxenbergerin  but  slender  of  body,  much  slenderer  than 
Rosina,  and  snow  white.  She  has  brown  hair,  a  little  nose, 
a  little  head  and  face,  brown  eyes  mixed  with  gray,  clear 
and  pretty.  The  underlid  of  her  eyes  is  somewhat  relaxed 
as  if  she  had  slept,  but  it  is  not  very  noticeable.  The  mouth 
is  a  little  high  but  clear  and  red.  And  besides  there  are 
many  girls  prettier  than  I  have  ever  seen  together  in  my 
life  and  merry.  The  women  are  not  kept  shut  up  in  the 


MAXIMILIAN  I  275 

day  time  but  only  at  night.  The  whole  house  is  full  of 
women  and  girls,  about  forty  of  them.  They  can  run 
about  the  house  everywhere  all  day  long.  The  old  lady, 
our  mother,  is  a  fine  old  woman,  very  pleasant  and  good. 

If  we  only  had  peace  it  would  be  a  garden  of  roses 

My  wife  is  a  thorough  sportswoman  with  hawk  and 
hound.  She  has  a  wind  hound  that  is  very  swift.  It 
sleeps  generally  all  night  in  our  room.  Here  everybody 
goes  to  bed  about  twelve  and  gets  up  about  eight.  I  am 
the  most  miserable  man  in  the  world  that  I  can't  eat, 
sleep,  walk  or  joust  because  I  have  so  much  to  do."1 

He  might  well  complain  of  having  much  to  do.  The 
Netherland  cities  were  perhaps  the  richest  in  the  world 
outside  of  Italy.  But  though  the  burghers  were  able  to 
bear  heavy  taxes,  they  were  not  disposed  to  do  so.  Their 
forefathers  had  been  used  to  a  voice  in  the  use  of  public 
moneys  and  the  conduct  of  government,  and  the  Flemings 
were  not  so  willing  as  Mary,  to  let  the  German  boy  who 
had  married  her  do  as  he  pleased.  Louis  XI,  with  a 
treasury  and  a  powerful  army  at  his  command,  was  ready 
to  seize  any  portion  of  Mary's  inheritance  along  the  north- 
eastern border  he  could  get  by  force  or  bribery.  War  in 
defence  of  these  was  a  great  injury  to  the  trade  of  the 
Flemish  cities  of  the  south,  who  not  unnaturally  objected 
to  spending  their  blood  and  money  on  a  struggle  which 
brought  them  nothing  but  loss.  In  the  northern  provinces 
two  cruel  factions,  the  Hooks  and  the  Codfish,  were  en- 
gaged in  an  obstinate  feud.  Each  demanded  Maximilian's 
unreserved  support  to  exterminate  the  other.  And  in  addi- 
tion, the  inhabitants  of  the  Duchy  of  Guelders  on  the  east- 

*  Pruschenh   vertraulicher  briefwechsel,  etc.,  page  27. 


276  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ern  border  of  the  Netherlands  had  only  submitted  out  of 
fear  to  the  rule  of  Charles,  who  bought  the  Duchy  from 
the  noble  who  claimed  to  own  it.  The  inhabitants,  who 
had  never  ratified  the  sale,  preferred  at  Charles'  death  a 
Duke  of  their  own  choosing  and  supported  him  against 
Maximilian. 

For  two  years  after  Maximilian  married  Mary,  the 
war  with  France  over  her  inheritance  came  to  nothing  but 
skirmishes  and  surprises  interrupted  by  truces.  It  was 
the  summer  of  1479  when  the  two  armies  met  in  pitched 
battle.  A  council  of  war  decided  to  attack  the  French 
border  fortress  of  Therouanne,  and  Maximilian  started  on 
the  invasion  with  a  mixed  force  of  English,  Netherland, 
Burgundian  and  German  troops,  amounting  to  twenty- 
eight  thousand.  The  bulk  of  the  army  was  made  up  of 
Flemish  infantry,  militia  of  the  cities ;  a  good  part  of  the 
remainder  were  mercenaries.  Scarcely  was  the  siege  be- 
gun, when  word  came  that  the  French  army  was  within 
three  miles  of  Therouanne,  evidently  meaning  to  give 
battle.  It  was  difficult  to  receive  an  attack  with  a  well 
garrisoned  hostile  fortress  on  the  flank;  and  an  assault 
upon  the  advancing  enemy  meant  the  passing  of  the  Lys. 
While  the  artillery  and  baggage  crossed  on  the  pontoons, 
the  infantry  waded  the  river  and  mounted  the  hills  of  the 
other  bank  to  find  themselves  face  to  face  with  the  French 
drawn  up  in  battle  order,  "their  corselets  and  head  pieces 
glittering  in  the  sun."  They  were  about  twenty-five  thou- 
sand strong.  Maximilian  formed  his  army  with  the  Eng- 
lish bowmen  and  German  Schiitzen  in  front.  Behind 
them  he  placed  the  field  guns,  and  in  their  rear  the  masses 
of  his  pike-men  in  two  columns.  He  took  his  own  posi- 


MAXIMILIAN  I  277 

tion  with  his  following  of  nobles  in  the  last  rank.  He  ad- 
dressed his  captains,  bidding  them  fight  bravely;  and  the 
French  leader  also  seems  to  have  indulged  in  a  flight  of 
oratory.  All  these  arrangements  took  up  the  time  until 
two  o'clock  when  artillery  opened  the  battle.  The  French 
answered  by  a  flanking  movement  of  the  cavalry.  The 
inferior  Burgundian  cavalry  tried  to  check  it,  and  were 
driven  from  the  field  in  rout.  Meantime  the  first  lines  of 
Burgundian  infantry  had  attacked,  and  the  main  body  of 
the  French,  whose  leader  was  in  hot  pursuit  of  the  routed 
cavalry,  left  their  strong  position  to  meet  them.  Charg- 
ing down  the  hill,  they  drove  the  English  bowmen  back, 
took  the  cannon  and  charged  the  two  columns  of  Flemish 
infantry.  They  trembled  and  threatened  to  break.  Then 
Maximilian  sprang  from  his  horse  and  calling  on  his 
nobles  to  follow,  rushed  into  the  ranks.  The  pikemen 
rallied,  rolled  the  enemy  back  through  the  guns  and  up 
the  hill,  until  they  broke  and  fled,  leaving  their  camp  at 
the  mercy  of  the  victors.  Nearly  half  the  French  army 
and  many  of  their  captains  fell  in  the  fight  or  were 
slaughtered  by  the  peasants  in  the  rout.  Maximilian 
made  no  further  use  of  the  victory  so  gallantly  won.  Five 
days  after  the  battle  he  dismissed  his  army  and  withdrew 
into  Flanders  with  his  booty.  His  wife  rode  out  to  meet 
him  and  Maximilian,  taking  his  infant  son  in  his  arms, 
rode  with  her  in  triumph  through  the  streets  of  Ghent 
amid  the  shouts  of  the  crowd. 

Triumph  brought  him  little  rest.  Louis  XI  continued 
to  inspire  a  border  warfare,  and  factions,  the  Hooks  in 
the  Dutch  provinces,  the  native  party  in  Guelders,  French 
partisans  and  democrats  in  Flanders,  gave  Maximilian 


278  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

few  chances  during  the  next  three  years  to  lay  aside  his 
armour.  Then  in  March  of  1482  the  great  misfortune  of 
his  life  befell  him.  As  they  rode  hawking  in  the  meadows 
near  Bruges,  the  Duchess  put  her  horse  at  a  ditch,  the  ani- 
mal fell  and  she  received  a  fatal  hurt.  Maximilian  broke 
into  such  despair  when  Mary  told  him, —  "I  feel  we  must 
part,"  that  she  begged  him  to  leave  the  room.  "For  so 
it  would  be  better  for  them  both."  She  summoned  the 
knights  of  the  Golden  Fleece,  the  leading  nobles  of  the 
Netherlands,  and  solemnly  swore  them  to  be  loyal  to 
her  husband  and  support  him  as  regent  for  her  infant  son. 
Maximilian  married  twice  afterwards  but  never  forgot  the 
wife  of  his  heart.  In  the  great  picture  he  planned  to  show 
the  triumphs  of  his  life,  his  boyhood's  bride  and  not  the 
wife  of  his  maturity  appeared  at  his  side,  and  several  of 
his  intimates  have  testified  that  to  the  time  of  his  death  he 
could  never  mention  Mary's  name  without  the  tears 
springing  to  his  eyes. 

The  loyalty  she  showed  in  the  reception  of  her  lover 
had  only  increased  during  the  five  years  of  marriage,  but 
the  loyalty  with  which  the  people  of  Flanders  and  the 
other  provinces  greeted  their  young  Duke  had  vanished. 
The  difficulties  of  government  increased  with  Mary's 
death,  and  for  years  Maximilian,  either  in  person  or  by 
lieutenants,  waged  almost  ceaseless  war  against  rebellious 
peoples  he  claimed  to  rule  in  the  name  of  his  son. 

To  rule  the  Netherlands  well  was  a  difficult  task  for 
anyone.  Local  pride  and  factional  jealousy  were  ram- 
pant everywhere.  The  provinces  were  an  unassimilated 
mass  of  separate  administrative  entities.  Their  various 
privileges  clashed  sharply  with  the  needs  of  any  common 


MAXIMILIAN  I  279 

executive.  It  was  a  confederation,  not  a  union,  and  its 
strongest  bond  was  that  the  same  ruler  wore  the  different 
crowns.  All  the  blame  for  these  continuous  civil  wars 
with  his  subjects  ought  not  to  be  laid  at  the  doors  of 
Maximilian,  and  yet  certain  qualities  which  limited  his 
ability  to  cope  with  the  task,  appear  with  great  plainness ; 
nowhere  more  plainly  to  the  discerning  eye  than  in  his 
own  brief  account  of  his  troubles  in  the  Netherlands. 

This  is  found  in  the  Weiss  Kunig,  one  of  a  stately  series 
of  works  Maximilian  composed  with  the  help  of  artists 
and  secretaries,  to  record  his  virtues,  capacities  and  tri- 
umphs for  the  instruction  of  his  descendants  and  the  ad- 
miration of  posterity.1  All  of  these  four  works,  Weiss 
Kunig,  Teuerdank,  The  Triumphal  Arch,  The  Triumphal 
Procession,  were  planned  and  overseen  in  every  stage  of 
execution  by  Maximilian  himself.  The  interpolations  and 
revisions  of  the  manuscript  of  Weiss  Kunig  and  Teuer- 
dank, the  drafts  dictated  or  written  by  him,  have  made 
plain  to  their  latest  editors  that  Maximilian  is  their  real 
author.  Even  where  some  of  the  words  are  those  of  his 
secretaries,  all  the  thoughts  and  many  of  the  phrases  are 
his  own.2  Whether  these  four  works  in  which  he  re- 
corded what  he  wished  remembered  of  his  life  work,  use 
prose,  poetry  or  engraving  as  the  medium  of  expression, 
they  are  allegorical.  Maximilian,  though  trained  in  the 
New  Learning,  kept  like  many  of  its  votaries,  the  mediae- 
val taste  for  allegory,  and  besides,  that  vague  literary  form 
enabled  him  better  to  mould  to  his  purpose  hard  facts 

1  For  an  account  of  the  Literary  Activity  of  Maximilian,  see  an  article  by 
the  writer  in  the  American  Historical  Review,  October,  1905. 

*  Jahrbuch  des  Kunsthistorischen  Sammlungen  dee  Allerhochsten  Kaiser- 
hauses,  etc.,  Vol.  VI,  page  12.  Vol.  VII,  page  5. 


280  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

whose  cold  record  might  not  have  given  to  his  descendants 
just  that  impression  of  his  transcendent  virtue  and  ca- 
pacity in  meeting  them,  of  which  Maximilian  himself  felt 
so  sure.  It  takes  very  little  comparison  of  Weiss  Kunig 
with  other  accounts  of  events  there  spoken  of,  to  con- 
clude that  Maximilian  felt  entirely  justified  in  adjusting 
or  suppressing  facts,  in  order  to  produce  upon  the  minds 
of  his  readers  the  impression  of  the  great  truth  of  his  own 
supreme  tact,  courage  and  skill  in  meeting  adversity. 
Weiss  Kunig  therefore  is  not  history,  and  no  one  can  rely 
on  it  for  any  accurate  account  of  what  happened.1  But 
this  only  makes  more  certain  the  unconscious  disclosures 
of  his  motives  for  action  and  his  attitude  toward  condi- 
tions. 

The  most  significant  of  these,  is  the  absence  of  a  sug- 
gestion of  the  slighest  suspicion  that  there  might  have 
been  any  justification  for  the  complaints  brought  against 
his  captains  and  councilors.  For  instance,  he  records 
that  the  Flemings  said, —  "His  councilors  and  captains 
were  thieves.  .  .  .  That  was  a  lie  for  his  councilors  and 
captains  were  pious  and  honourable."  Now  it  is  certain 
that  the  mercenaries  Maximilian  maintained  pillaged  the 
people  of  the  Netherlands,  friend  and  foe,  in  the  most 
shameless  and  brutal  manner.  It  would  indeed  have  been 
difficult  for  Maximilian  to  restrain  them.  He  was  al- 
ways at  his  wits'  end  for  money  to  pay  their  wages,  and  to 
have  maintained  too  strict  a  discipline  would  have  brought 
the  danger  of  mutiny  among  the  unpaid  troops.  That 
difficulty  he  could  not  meet  by  any  remarkable  personal 

»Jahrbucher  der  K.  H.  S.,  etc.,  Vol.  VI,  preface,  page  xxviii. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  281 

influence.  It  is  true  that  soldiers  admired  Maximilian 
for  the  strength  that  enabled  him  to  break  the  haft  of  a 
great  landsknechts  spear  by  the  unaided  movement  of  his 
hands,1  and  the  reckless  courage  which  always  plunged 
him  into  the  thickest  of  every  fight,  but  his  court  biog- 
rapher is  mistaken  in  the  assertion  that  those  who  served 
him  were  always  full  of  love  and  loyalty.  Seven  marked 
instances  can  be  cited  where  his  inability  to  command 
the  loyalty  of  his  unpaid  troops  betrayed  his  fortunes  to 
the  most  dangerous  losses.2  And  in  the  Netherlands  he 
kept  the  loyalty  of  his  troops  largely  by  losing  the  loyalty 
of  his  people. 

His  unwillingness  to  entertain  complaints  against  his 
councilors  came  from  noble  traits  of  character ;  generosity, 
which  made  money  run  through  his  fingers  to  reward 
those  who  served  him,  and  an  habitual  desire  to  stand  by 
his  friends.  But  however  amiable  in  a  private  person,  an 
overwillingness  to  stand  by  one's  "friends"  has  always, 
whether  under  a  monarchy  or  a  republic,  been  a  weakness 
in  a  ruler,  as  fertile  for  the  oppression  of  the  people  as 
deliberate  injustice.  And  a  mass  of  concurrent  testimony 
renders  it  certain  that  Maximilian's  confidence  in  his 
officials  was  terribly  abused.  Almost  all  councilors 
were  at  that  time  in  receipt  of  pensions  from 
foreign  potentates,  fees  to  look  after  their  "interests." 
By  the  witness  of  ambassadors  of  all  nationalities,  Max- 
imilian's councilors  were  particularly  venal.  The  English 
ambassador  reports:  "The  Emperor  has  councilors  as 
corrupt  as  possible  and  plunderers  in  every  way  of  their 

1  Grunpeck. 

2Ulmann,  Kaiser  Maximilian  I.     Stuttgart,  1884.     Vol.  I,  page  863. 


282  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

master's  goods."1  Another  English  agent  reports  that 
those  of  Charles  V's  councilors  who  had  served  under 
Maximilian,  "are  hated  by  all  in  Almayne."2  Indeed  the 
Electors  had  made  it  a  condition  of  Charles'  election  that 
all  Maximilian's  councilors  should  be  excluded  from  the 
new  Imperial  Council.  And  at  Maximilian's  death  the 
people  of  his  Austrian  Duchies  immediately  made  a  clean 
sweep  of  all  his  officials,  and  appointed  new  ones. 

This  exaggerated  corruption  of  Maximilian's  servants 
continued  all  his  life,  until  it  became  proverbial  and  passed 
into  anecdotage.  Erasmus  tells  in  his  Colloquies 3  the  story 
of  a  young  nobleman  who,  having  collected  fifty  thou- 
sand florins,  returned  only  thirty  thousand  to  the  Em- 
peror. Maximilian  took  it  without  question,  but  the 
councilors  induced  him  to  summon  the  nobleman  again 
to  give  an  account.  The  young  man,  looking  around  on 
the  assembled  council,  expressed  his  willingness  to  do  so 
if  some  of  those  present,  "very  ready  at  making  up  such 
accounts,"  would  show  him  how.  According  to  Erasmus, 
the  Emperor  smiled  at  the  wit  of  the  reply  and  asked 
nothing  further. 

Another  reason  beside  this  willingness  to  stand  by  his 
friends  through  thick  and  thin,  brought  Maximilian  into 
trouble  with  the  burghers  of  the  Netherlands ;  that  was  a 
deep  rooted  instinctive  dislike  to  political  power  in  any 
but  noble  or  princely  hands.  In  spite  of  his  popular  man- 
ners when  he  mingled  at  Augsburg  or  Nuremberg  in 

1  Letters  and  Papers  of  the  Reign  of  Henry  VIII.  Domestic  Series.  Vol. 
IV,  part  I,  number  1447. 

*  Letters  and  Papers  of  the  Reign  of  Henry  VIII.  Domestic  Series,  Vol. 
Ill,  part  I,  page  134. 

8  Colloquies  of  Erasmus,  translated  by  N.  Bailey.  London,  1900.  Vol.  II, 
page  177. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  283 

city  dances,  and  a  sincere  desire  to  do  justice  to  the  com- 
mon people,  Maximilian  had  no  confidence  in  peasant 
or  burgher.  This  appears  in  every  brief  account  given  in 
the  Weiss  Kunig,  of  different  rebellions  in  the  Nether- 
lands. Germany  needed  nothing  more  than  the  hanging 
of  a  score  of  robber  barons,  but  the  only  executions  pic- 
tured by  Maximilian's  orders  among  the  nearly  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  wood  cuts  of  Weiss  Kunig,  are  four  show- 
ing the  executions  of  rebellious  peasants  or  burghers. 
One  shows  a  block  house  surrounded  by  armed  men,  on 
one  side  are  wheels  on  posts;  on  top  of  each  wheel  is  a 
man  broken,  around  the  circumference  is  a  fringe  of  men 
hung.  The  note  tells  how  he  took  a  fort  of  the  insurgent 
Flemings  and  "whatever  of  the  garrison  was  not  shot  or 
stabbed,  he  had  strung  up." 

When  Maximilian  entered  Ghent  in  1577,  the  people 
hated  France  and  hailed  him  with  joy  as  their  defender 
against  French  conquest.  Five  years  later  on  the  death 
of  his  wife,  they  threw  themselves  into  the  arms  of  France 
to  be  rid  of  Maximilian's  rule.  However  great  the  prov- 
ocation they  may  have  given  to  their  regent,  it  is  hard  to 
apologize  for  such  a  fact.  People  do  not  usually  ex- 
change a  hatred  for  an  affection  unless  they  are  driven  to 
it. 

Maximilian  was  a  constructer  of  day  dreams  in  which 
he  played  a  glorious  part  as  restorer  of  the  Empire,  or  as 
the  head  of  a  crusade  driving  the  Turk  from  Europe,  or  as 
a  restorer  of  the  Church,  or  the  founder  of  the  greatest  line 
of  kings  Europe  had  known,  but  his  literary  works  show 
a  most  dreary  lack  of  any  real  power  of  imagination,  and 
it  is  probable  that  he  never  once  succeeded  in  seeing  his 


284  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

rule  in  the  Netherlands  from  the  Netherlander's  point  of 
view. 

He  forced  them  to  take  his  point  of  view.  He  was  a 
merciful  man,  but  war  was  very  cruel  in  those  days.  He 
records  that  when  he  invaded  France,  he  made  so  great 
a  burning  that  the  smoke  covered  the  sun  and  "for  three 
hours  harness  did  not  gleam."1  He  let  his  troops  do 
their  best  at  destruction  around  Ghent,  which  was  the 
center  of  resistance  to  his  authority,  and,  in  the  beginning 
of  the  summer  of  1485,  he  entered  the  city  in  triumph,  ac- 
companied by  his  young  son,  who  had  been  kept  from  him 
by  the  insurgents  for  years.  His  authority  as  regent  was 
fully  acknowledged,  and  the  leaders  of  the  opposition  were 
sent  to  the  scaffold. 

But  on  almost  the  same  day  when  the  house  of  Haps- 
burg  thus  vindicated  by  force  control  over  the  rich  lands 
of  the  west,  disaster  came  to  it  in  the  east.  All  of  the 
reigning  European  houses  run  back  to  Adam  through  two 
German  Countesses,  half  sisters,  who,  in  the  middle  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  married  Princes  of  the  houses  of  Aus- 
tria and  Baden.2  The  desire  of  the  German  princes  to 
marry  heiresses,  which  this  implies,  was  a  marked  char- 
acteristic of  the  Hapsburgs,  and  their  luck  in  getting  rich 
wives  is  recorded  in  the  saying, —  "Tu  felix  Austria, 
nube." 

Frederick  Ill's  distant  cousin  and  predecessor  in  the 
Empire,  Albert,  had  married  Elizabeth,  who  was  daughter 
of  Sigismund,  Emperor  of  Germany  and  King  of  Bo- 

1  Weiss  Kunig,  148. 

•Lorenz  O.  Reichskanzler  und  Reichskanzlei  Preuss.  Jahrbucher,  Vol. 
XXIX,  Introduction  IX. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  285 

hernia,  by  Maria,  Queen  of  Hungary.  Albert's  son, 
Ladislas  Postumus,  therefore  received  the  crown  of  Bo- 
hemia through  his  grandfather  and  of  Hungary  through 
his  grandmother.  At  his  death  his  guardian,  Frederick 
III,  advanced  a  claim  to  Hungary  and  Bohemia.  But  it 
was  not  very  strong  even  when  supported  by  his  asser- 
tion that  Bohemia,  as  a  fief  of  the  Empire,  was,  in  default 
of  a  male  heir,  at  his  disposal.  And  when  Bohemia  elected 
as  King,  George  Podiebrad  who  had  ruled  with  great  skill 
in  the  name  of  the  boy-King  Ladislas,  Frederick,  after 
Austria  had  been  wasted  by  King  George's  armies,  made 
peace,  and  gave  a  half  promise  to  confirm  him  in  the  fief 
of  Bohemia  and  grant  him  the  title  of  Elector  of  the  Em- 
pire. 

The  throne  of  Hungary  was  claimed  by  William,  Duke 
of  Saxony  and  Casimer,  King  of  Poland,  husbands  of 
Ladislas  Postumus'  sisters.  But  the  Hungarian  nobles 
were  very  unwilling  to  have  an  outsider  for  their  ruler. 
They  chose  Matthias,  son  of  John  Hunyadi,  who  had  oc- 
cupied in  Hungary  the  same  position  George  Podiebrad 
held  in  Bohemia,  and  driven  a  great  Turkish  army  from 
the  walls  of  Belgrade. 

A  rebellion  against  Matthias  offered  the  crown  of  Hun- 
gary to  Frederick  III  and  the  civil  war  was  closed  by  an 
agreement  that  Matthias  should  be  King,  but  if  he  died 
without  a  son,  Frederick  or  one  of  his  sons  should  succeed 
to  the  crown  of  Hungary.  A  war  between  George  of 
Bohemia  and  Matthias  of  Hungary,  was  closed  by  the 
offer  of  George  to  acknowledge  Matthias  as  heir. 
Shortly  after  George  died  and  the  Bohemians,  dis- 
regarding the  agreements  between  Matthias  and  George, 


286  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

chose  Prince  Ladislas  of  Poland,  King.  Matthias'  persis- 
tence in  fighting  for  his  claim  to  the  Bohemian  crown 
when  the  Turks  were  threatening  to  destroy  Hungary, 
produced  a  rebellion  among  his  nobles,  who  elected  an- 
other King.  Matthias  subdued  the  rebellion,  and  forced 
Ladislas  of  Bohemia  to  surrender  the  greater  part  of  his 
possessions,  with  the  privilege  of  redeeming  them  on 
Matthias'  death  for  a  huge  ransom.  The  Emperor  Fred- 
erick intrigued  against  Matthias'  plans,  and  the  outcome 
of  the  ill  feeling  was  that,  in  1485,  Matthias  overran  Aus- 
tria and  entered  Vienna  in  triumph  while  the  Emperor 
Frederick  fled  from  his  duchy  to  ask  help  from  the 
German  princes. 

Their  answer  was  to  elect  his  son,  Maximilian,  King  of 
the  Romans,  a  title  which  made  him  heir  apparent  to  the 
Empire.  On  the  ninth  of  April,  1486,  the  three  archie- 
piscopal  Electors  of  Cologne,  Treves  and  Mayence 
crowned  him  at  Aachen.  Maximilian  promised  to  take 
up  the  burden  of  the  war  in  Austria,1  but  no  sooner  was 
he  crowned  than  he  returned  to  the  Netherlands,  and 
took  the  first  opportunity  of  beginning  a  war  of  revenge 
on  France.  By  the  summer  of  1487  Flanders  was 
plunged  into  disorder  and  discontent.  Maximilian's  un- 
paid mercenaries  again  plundered  his  subjects,  and  the 
burghers  of  Ghent  and  Bruges  saw  no  reason  why  their 
money  should  be  spent  in  a  war  whose  only  effect  upon 
their  fortunes  was  the  ruin  of  their  trade  with  France. 

The  discontent  was  not  long  in  finding  expression.  In 
1487  a  general  assembly  of  the  guilds  of  Ghent  voted 
unanimously  that  peace  with  France  ought  to  be  main- 

1  PrtUchenk   vertraulicher   briefwechsel,    etc..   page    68. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  287 

tained,  and  ordered  an  inquiry  into  the  causes  of  the  de- 
plorable condition  of  the  finances  of  the  city.  They  de- 
posed the  city  officials  and  appointed  new  ones.  Max- 
imilian replied  to  this  revolt  by  putting  a  price  of  six 
gold  pieces  on  the  head  of  each  insurgent  and  twelve  for 
each  prisoner.  Bruges  refused  to  vote  troops  to  attack 
Ghent,  and  sent  a  deputation  to  inquire  into  the  causes 
of  the  discontent  in  the  sister  city.  Ghent  replied  by  com- 
plaining of  the  war  with  France,  the  maladministration 
of  the  finances,  the  filling  of  the  offices  with  foreigners, 
and  the  protracted  refusal  to  give  any  accounting  for  the 
expenditure  of  the  extraordinary  taxes  they  had  volunta- 
rily voted  to  the  government. 

Meantime,  trouble  had  arisen  between  Maximilian's 
mercenary  troops,  hated  on  account  of  their  pillaging,  and 
the  people  of  Bruges.  It  was  increased  by  the  report  of  a 
plot  to  seize  the  gates  and  let  in  the  army  outside  to 
master  the  city.  The  alarm  bell  rang,  the  burghers  as- 
sembled in  the  market  place,  overawed  the  men  at  arms 
and  the  regent  became  a  prisoner  in  his  own  city.  A 
jiumber  of  his  officials  accused  of  peculation  were  executed 
after  summary  trials. 

Vain  attempts  were  made  to  free  Maximilian.  The  Pope 
threatened  the  maledictions  of  the  Church  on  Bruges. 
The  Emperor  summoned  the  forces  of  the  Empire  to 
march  to  release  the  King  of  the  Romans.  His  partisans 
ravaged  the  country  and  rode  round  the  walls.  One  of 
the  many  adherents,  whose  loyalty  he  kept  through  good 
and  bad  fortune,  Kunz  von  der  Rosen,  a  nobleman  who 
was  in  court  half  as  friend  and  half  as  licensed  jester,  got 
into  Bruges  in  the  robe  of  a  monk  to  beseech  Maximilian 


288  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

to  take  his  disguise  and  steal  out,  leaving  him  to  bear  the 
fury  of  the  outwitted  burghers.  Maximilian  refused  the 
stratagem  as  unworthy  of  his  royal  dignity.  Despairing 
of  aid  after  four  months'  imprisonment,  he  yielded  to  the 
insurrection.  On  the  i6th  of  May,  1488,  he  solemnly 
swore  in  the  market  place  to  dismiss  his  mercenaries  from 
the  Netherlands,  to  give  up  the  regency  of  Flanders  and 
allow  a  council  to  rule  them  in  the  name  of  his  son.  He 
also  promised  to  maintain  peace  with  France.  In  the 
other  provinces  he  was  to  remain  regent,  but  deputies  were 
to  meet  every  year  in  a  common  assembly  of  the  Nether- 
lands, and  neither  peace  nor  war  was  hereafter  to  be  made 
without  the  vote  of  this  assembly.  In  return,  he  was  to 
receive  a  sum  of  money  to  pay  his  mercenaries  before  dis- 
missal and  a  considerable  yearly  income  from  Flanders. 
Maximilian  left  hostages  in  Bruges  and  Ghent  for  the 
keeping  of  this  oath,  and  took  it  with  mention  of  the  pen- 
alties of  the  church  on  perjury,  and  he  promised  to  per- 
suade the  Pope,  the  Emperor  and  the  Electors  to  confirm 
these  agreements.1 

Scarcely  was  he  free  when  he  heard  that  his  father,  with 
an  army  of  twenty  thousand  men,  was  on  the  banks  of  the 
Rhine.  Arrived  in  the  camp,  he  tried  to  induce  the  army 
to  turn  back,  but  was  finally  persuaded  to  break  his  oath 
and  fight  with  them ;  probably  on  the  ground  that  the  citi- 
zens of  Bruges  had  treacherously  imprisoned  him  and 
compelled  him  to  swear  to  the  dishonour  of  the  Empire.2 

1  De  Smet  Memoire  Historique  de  La  Guerre  de  Maximilian  Roi  des  Re- 
mains Centre  les  Villes  de  Flandre.  Mem.  de  1' Academic,  Bruxelles,  Tome 
XXXV. 

•yimann,  Kaiser  Max.  I.    Vol.  I,  page  30  ff. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  289 

He  himself  wrote  that  he  made  the  campaign  not  in  his 
own  quarrel,  but  only  as  a  Prince  of  the  Empire  bound  to 
follow  its  banner.  At  the  same  time  he  demanded  the 
payment  of  the  sums  of  money  which  had  been  part  of  the 
agreement  he  was  breaking;  an  instance  of  the  way  in 
which  Maximilian's  tenacity  in  holding  to  his  own  rights, 
limited  his  power  to  put  himself  in  another's  place  and 
was  unmitigated  even  by  a  sense  of  humour. 

But  the  army  could  not  take  Bruges,  and  by  the  autumn 
was  back  in  Germany.  In  the  end  of  December,  Max- 
imilian said  farewell  to  the  Netherlands  where  he  had 
spent  twelve  years  of  almost  continuous  fighting,  and 
followed  it.  His  own  authority  in  his  infant  son's  prov- 
inces was  far  from  strong.  Flanders  and  Brabant  in 
the  south,  Guelders  in  the  east,  were  in  the  hands  of  his 
opponents  backed  by  the  French  and  The  Hooks  were  stir- 
ring in  Holland  and  Zealand. 

He  left  his  affairs  in  strong  hands,  Albert  Duke  of 
Saxony  was  one  of  the  most  efficient  of  living  Germans, 
and  in  three  years,  by  cruel  war  and  bold  diplomacy,  he 
had  allayed  or  crushed  opposition. 

While  Albert  of  Saxony  was  thus  maintaining  Max- 
imilian's fight  to  remain  regent  of  the  Netherlands,  the 
King  of  the  Romans  was  very  busy  with  those  troubles 
of  his  house  in  south  and  east  which  his  father  had  been 
unable  to  master.  In  this  he  employed  what  was  un- 
doubtedly his  greatest  power, — an  ability  to  conciliate  op- 
ponents. Skill  in  conciliation  was  in  those  days,  and 
probably  has  been  in  all  days,  rarer  than  power  to  fight, 
and  Maximilian  seems  to  have  possessed  a  high  degree 
of  it.  He  was  an  exceedingly  amiable  personality  with 


290  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

tactful  manners,  based  on  real  thoughtfulness  for  others.1 
One  of  his  biographers  called  him  the  most  affable  prince 
of  his  age.  People  embittered  by  wrongs  were  often  ap- 
peased by  a  meeting  with  him.  And  he  always  tried  to  put 
everyone,  prince  or  peasant,  at  his  ease.  Frederick  the 
Wise  said,  that  "during  his  whole  life  he  had  never  met 
a  more  polite  man  than  the  Emperor  Maximilian."2 

He  employed  this  skill  now  in  three  directions — to 
reconcile  King  Matthias,  the  conqueror  of  the  Austrian 
lands,  with  his  father  Frederick  III, — to  reconcile  Fred- 
erick III  with  his  son-in-law,  Albert  of  Bavaria, — to  rec- 
oncile his  distant  cousin,  Sigismund  of  Tirol,  to  the  es- 
tates of  Tirol. 

He  agreed  to  meet  Matthias  at  Vienna  in  August, 
1489,  and  though  the  meeting  never  took  place,  an  ex- 
change of  ambassadors  brought  the  King  of  the  Romans 
and  the  King  of  Hungary  very  near  to  afi  agreement  for 
the  peaceable  restoration  of  Austria  upon  payment  of  an 
indemnity.  Maximilian  had  reckoned  without  his  old 
and  suspicious  father,  who,  though  powerless  to  recover 
his  domains,  refused  all  compromise.  But  a  truce  until 
September,  1490,  was  finally  established. 

Maximilian  immediately  moved  westward  to  arrange 
the  affairs  of  his  house  in  Tirol.  At  Innsbruck  he  found  an 
exceedingly  strained  situation.  Duke  Sigismund  of  Tirol, 
a  man  of  some  parts  and  cultivated  tastes,  was  too  weak 
and  selfish  to  be  even  a  tolerable  ruler.  He  had  fallen  com- 

1  In  his  last  hour,  when  the  clergy  gathered  in  his  room  to  chant  the  peni- 
tential psalms,  unable  to  speak,  he  made  a  sign  with  his  hand  for  them  to  be 
seated.  Funeral  Oration  by  Faber.  Freher  Struve,  Vol.  II,  page  741. 

'  Friedrichs  des  Weisen  Leben  und  zeit  geschichte  nach  Spalatins  hand- 
schrift  herausgegeben.  Neudecker  und  Preller,  page  45. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  291 

pletely  into  the  power  of  unworthy  favorites  and  greedy 
councilors.  They  had  squandered  the  public  money,  and 
finally  induced  Sigismund  to  declare  in  March,  1487,  a 
useless  war  on  Venice.  This  ruined  the  trade  by  which 
Tirolese  merchants  lived,  and  his  incompetent  command- 
ers met  disaster  in  the  field.  An  assembly  of  the  Estates 
practically  deprived  him  of  the  exercise  of  the  powers  of 
government  by  putting  affairs  in  the  hands  of  a  council 
chosen  by  him  out  of  their  nominees.  They  added  to  the 
decrees  which  established  the  new  order,  that,  if  the 
agreement  was  broken,  they  should  feel  justified  in  calling 
another  prince  of  the  house  of  Austria  to  become  their 
Duke.  Sigismund  quarrelled  with  his  new  council  and 
a  dangerous  deadlock  was  referred  to  the  assembly. 
Maximilian,  coming  to  Innsbruck,  persuaded  his  cousin 
to  break  it  by  assigning  to  him  the  authority  over  Tirol 
and  the  lands  which  went  with  it.  The  astonished  assem- 
bly gladly  hailed  Maximilian  as  Duke  and  he  ratified  all 
their  rights  and  privileges.1 

The  third  reconciliation  was  the  most  difficult.  The 
Dukes  of  Bavaria  had  long  been  rivals  of  the  Hapsburgs, 
and  they  had  played  on  the  weakness  of  Sigismund  to  the 
utmost.  Flattering  his  vanity,  they  had  exploited  his 
needs,  until,  by  sale  or  pledge,  they  had  obtained  large  por- 
tions of  the  Hapsburg  lands  between  Tirol  and  Bavaria. 
The  older  branch  of  the  house  found  their  opportunity  to 
protest  against  this  when  Albert  of  Bavaria,  a  hand- 
some and  brilliant  Prince  of  thirty-eight,  saw  at  Sigis- 

1  Jager  Albert.  Der  Uebergang  Tirols  und  der  osterreich  ischer  vorlande 
von  dem  Erghergoge  Sigmund  an  den  romiscben  Konig  Maximilian,  Archiv  fur 
osterreich  ische  Geschichte  1,1. 


292  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

mund's  court  the  beautiful  Kunigunde,  the  Emperor's 
twenty-year-old  daughter.  He  promptly  fell  in  love  with 
her.  Frederick  was  not  unwilling  to  make  the  match  if 
the  House  of  Bavaria  would  give  back  the  lands  they  had 
gotten  from  Sigismund.  If  this  were  done,  he  would 
give  his  daughter  her  mother's  jewels  and  a  small  dowry 
in  lands.  The  bankrupt  Sigismund,  with  his  usual  gen- 
erosity, also  offered  a  dowry  for  Kunigunde.  But  in  the 
midst  of  these  negotiations,  the  wooer  took  another 
good  piece  of  Hapsburg  territory.  The  Imperial  City  of 
Regensburg  was  deeply  in  debt.  Albert  offered  to  pay 
this  debt  and  grant  privileges  which  prophesied  pros- 
perity. The  council  accepted  his  offer,  ceased  to  be  a 
Free  City  owing  direct  allegiance  to  the  Emperor,  and  be- 
came subjects  of  Albert.  The  Emperor  at  once  with- 
drew his  consent  to  the  marriage.  But  Albert  evident- 
ly intended  to  get  lands  and  bride  too.  He  forged  a  let- 
ter from  the  Emperor  consenting  to  the  match,  and  the 
willing  Sigismund  and  Kunigunde  hastened  the  marriage. 
And,  far  from  giving  back  to  the  house  of  Hapsburg  the 
lands  he  held  in  pledge,  he  followed  the  marriage  by  the 
largest  purchase  of  lands  he  had  yet  gotten  from  the  good 
natured  spendthrift  who  had  helped  him  to  his  bride.  At 
h'is  sister's  request,  Maximilian  now  tried  to  remove  their 
father's  anger  with  his  son-in-law.  It  was  naturally  very 
difficult.  But  after  he  had  made  the  house  of  Wittelsbach 
willing  to  return,  in  exchange  for  the  money  advanced  on 
them,  the  lands  sold  or  pledged,  he  finally  succeeded  in 
effecting  an  outward  reconciliation  between  the  old  Em- 
peror and  his  children. 

These  three   successful   efforts   at  pacification  were, 


MAXIMILIAN  I  293 

however,  interrupted  by  war.  King  Matthias  of  Hun- 
gary died  in  April,  1490.  He  left  no  legitimate  son  and 
according  to  the  old  treaty  with  Frederick,  made  in  1463, 
a  Hapsburg  was  to  succeed.  The  situation  gave  Max- 
imilian a  chance  not  only  to  reconquer  Austria  but  to 
seize  the  crown  of  Hungary.  The  magnates  of  Hungary 
were  not  disposed  either  to  carry  out  the  old  treaty,  by 
which  the  crown  went  to  Maximilian,  or  the  wishes  of 
their  dead  King,  that  his  illegitimate  son,  John  Corvinus, 
should  wear  the  crown.  They  elected  Ladislas  of  Bo- 
hemia, as  their  King.  He  marched  promptly  to  secure 
the  possession  of  the  Hungarian  conquest  of  Austria.  Un- 
expected difficulty  met  him,  for  Vienna  was  tired  of  for- 
eign rule.  The  burghers  rose,  shut  the  Magyar  garrison 
up  in  the  citadel  and  prepared  for  defense.  Maximilian 
pushed  the  enlistment  of  mercenaries  and  in  the  end  of 
July,  began  a  swift  re-conquest  of  the  lands  his  father  had 
lost.  On  the  nineteenth  of  August,  1490,  he  entered 
Vienna  amid  the  shouts  of  the  people,  greeting  one  whose 
entry  a  leading  physician,  in  the  joy  of  his  heart,  recorded 
in  his  diary  thus :  "Omnipotent  God  of  his  grace  gave  to 
the  people  the  most  just,  most  chaste,  most  strenuous, 
most  warlike,  Maximilian  (in  black  ink),  Maximilian  (in 
red  ink),  Maximilian  (with  green  ink)."  *  By  the  end  of 
the  month  the  Hungarian  was  driven  from  the  Hapsburg 
lands. 

The  University  of  Vienna  had  solemnly  voted  that 
Maximilian  was  rightful  King  of  Hungary.  The  curse 
of  the  age  was  senseless  war,  denounced  by  all  its  ablest 
men  from  Erasmus  to  Machiavelli.  It  was  a  rare  ruler 

1  Fontes  Rerum  Austriacum,   Vol.   I,  page  53. 


294  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

who  could  resist  the  temptation  to  assert  a  paper  claim 
upon  foreign  territory  in  campaigns  which  could  bring 
nothing  but  loss  to  the  country  of  which  he  was  the  nat- 
ural sovereign.  Many  years  were  needed  before  Henry 
VIII  outgrew  the  day  dream  of  adding  the  crown  of 
France  to  the  crown  of  England,  and  three  successive 
Valois  squandered  blood  and  treasure  upon  Italian  in- 
vasions denounced  by  their  wisest  counselors  as  promis- 
ing more  present  loss  than  future  gain.  Maximilian 
could  hardly  be  expected  to  be  cleverer  than  the  bulk  of 
his  contemporaries,  especially  since  his  father's  reluctance 
to  make  war,  had  seemed  so  much  the  outcome  of  weak- 
ness rather  than  of  wisdom.  In  October,  1490,  he  crossed 
the  Hungarian  border  with  a  strong  army.  His  march 
was  a  triumphal  procession.  In  November  he  stormed 
the  rich  Stuhlweissenburg  where  the  Hungarian  kings 
were  crowned  and  buried,  and  the  whole  kingdom  lay 
helpless  at  his  feet.  The  mercenaries  celebrated  the  vic- 
tory with  slaughter  and  plunder,  and  still  demanded  extra 
wages.  Maximilian,  as  usual,  had  no  money  and  without 
payment  his  men  positively  refused  to  move  forward.  In 
December  he  was  compelled  to  march  back  to  Vienna. 
Six  months  later  his  conquests  were  lost,  and  the  only  re- 
sult of  his  attempt  to  gain  the  crown  of  Hungary  was  a 
heavier  debt  for  himself  and  the  wasting  of  the  farms  of 
Hungarian  peasants  with  fire  and  sword.  Nothing  re- 
mained but  compromise  and,  in  the  end  of  1491,  the  Peace 
of  Pressburg,  ratified  by  the  Hungarian  magnates,  ac- 
knowledged Ladislas  as  King  of  Hungary  and  his  male 
children  as  heirs,  on  condition  that,  failing  a  male  heir, 
the  crown  should  go  to  Maximilian  and  his  descendants. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  295 

To  celebrate  his  success  in  unifying  the  possessions  and 
enlarging  the  prospects  of  the  Hapsburgs,  Maximilian 
had  a  medal  struck  in  the  spring  of  1490.  One  side  shows 
his  head.  The  reverse  displays  the  arms  of  Hungary, 
Austria  and  Tirol  with  the  arms  of  Burgundy  below. 

Maximilian  was  glad  to  be  set  free  from  trouble  in  the 
east.  For  many  months  he  had  longed  to  hasten  toward 
the  west.  His  efforts  for  internal  peace  had  for  their 
strongest  motive  a  plan  which  promised  at  once  revenge 
on  France  and  an  extension  of  Hapsburg  territories.  He 
had  long  been  an  ally  of  the  Duke  of  Brittany,  last  of  the 
great  semi-royal  feudal  magnates,  who  had  so  long  ham- 
pered the  Valois  in  their  efforts  to  make  France  a  nation. 
In  1488  the  Duke  had  been  defeated  by  the  forces  of  the 
crown,  compelled  to  surrender  his  fortresses  and  to 
promise  not  to  marry  his  daughter  and  heir  Anne  without 
the  consent  of  the  French  King.  Anne  was  fourteen 
years  old  and  like  Mary  of  Burgundy,  besieged  by  suitors. 
Among  them  she  preferred  Maximilian ;  strong,  warlike, 
able  to  champion  her  distress.  The  French  crown  of- 
fered Maximilan  free  hand  in  Flanders  if  he  would  let 
Brittany  alone.  Maximilian  apparently  accepted,  but,  in 
the  end  of  1490,  was  secretly  married  to  Anne  by  proxy. 

His  bride,  little  more  than  a  clever  child,  was  sur- 
rounded by  enemies.  He  knew  he  must  help  Brittany, 
which  he  loved  more  than  his  Duchess,  by  the  sword. 
He  was  therefore  compelled  to  come  before  the  Reichstag 
asking  men  and  money  for  two  enterprises ;  against  Hun- 
gary in  the  east,  and  France  in  the  west.  They  reluc- 
tantly voted  eight  thousand  men  and,  in  August,  Maximil- 
ian announced  to  his  father  the  intention  of  marching 


296  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

into  Brittany  with  such  a  force  as  he  could  gather.  His 
father  gave  unwilling  permission  to  carry  the  banner  of 
the  Empire,  but  warned  his  son  of  disaster.  The  smallest 
knowledge  of  men  ought  to  have  told  Maximilian  that, 
whatever  his  enemies  said,  they  were  leaving  nothing  un- 
done to  break  his  marriage.  And  the  smallest  knowledge 
of  women  should  have  warned  him  that  they  would  surely 
succeed  if  he  kept  too  long  away  from  the  young  girl  who 
had  turned  to  him  in  distress.  But  impulsive  as  Maximil- 
ian was  in  making  a  plan,  he  was  very  slow  in  carrying  it 
out,  and  he  seems  to  have  laboured  under  the  delusion 
that  to  form  the  idea  of  a  stroke  of  state-craft,  was  the 
same  as  accomplishing  it.  Lack  of  enough  men  and 
money  and  the  commands  of  his  father  to  let  Brittany 
alone  until  he  had  attended  to  Hungary,  may  have  made  it 
impossible  for  Maximilian  to  go  to  Brittany.  But  in  that 
case  he  ought  not  to  have  been  surprised  to  hear,  a  week 
after  the  agreement  of  Pressburg  had  made  him  heir  to 
the  throne  of  Hungary  if  the  dynasty  failed,  that  the 
young  girl  who  for  a  year  had  vainly  called  for  his  help, 
flattered  by  his  enemies,  attacked  by  her  own,  insulted  by 
his  neglect,  had  given  way.  The  Pope  annulled  her  mar- 
riage and  in  November,  1491,  Anne  of  Brittany,  became 
Queen  of  France.  Maximilian's  daughter  Margaret  had 
for  years  been  in  France  where  she  was  being  educated 
as  the  affianced  bride  of  Charles  VIII.  At  one  stroke, 
therefore,  the  Valois  had  taken  Maximilian's  bride  and 
jilted  his  daughter. 

The  fact  that  he  had  given  the  chance  for  this  double 
insult  made  Maximilian  feel  it  the  more.  The  slow  burn- 
ing Hapsburg  hate  never  died  out  of  his  heart  and  during 


MAXIMILIAN  I  297 

all  his  life,  it  was  hard  for  Maximilian  to  free  himself 
long  from  the  instinctive  desire  to  get  even  with  the 
Valois.  At  the  moment  he  could  do  but  little  for  ven- 
geance. The  princes  of  Germany  would  not  give  him 
forces  fit  to  invade  France,  and  his  allies,  Henry  VII  and 
Ferdinand  of  Aragon,  allowed  themselves  to  be  bought 
off  by  the  French  crown.  He  made  a  successful  invasion 
of  the  ancient  Burgundian  lands,  and  at  Senlis,  May,  1493, 
received  back  the  greater  part  of  his  daughter's  dowry. 

Both  sides  were  ready  for  peace  because  Charles  and 
Maximilian  were  drawn  from  the  war  over  Brittany  and 
Burgundy  by  larger  plans.  The  young  King  of  France 
wanted  to  use  the  great  power  won  for  him  by  his  keen 
and  unscrupulous  father  and  his  clever  sister,  in  some 
undertaking  which  should  give  him  the  pleasures  of  ad- 
venture and  the  sense  of  glory.  He  mustered  his  soldiers 
and  called  his  nobility  to  follow  him  over  the  Alps  and 
Apennines  to  assert  his  claim  upon  the  crown  of  Naples. 
At  the  end  of  August,  1494,  with  the  greatest  army  at 
his  back  Europe  had  seen  for  a  generation,  he  poured 
down  into  the  Lombard  plain  and  opened  a  long  series  of 
wars  in  which  Frenchman,  Spaniard,  German  and  Swiss 
slaughtered  the  Italian  peasant  in  his  field  or  plundered 
the  shop-keepers  of  the  cities,  to  decide  who  had  the  right 
to  wear  the  crowns  of  the  Italian  principalities. 

Maximilian  was  not  able  to  keep  out  of  this 
conflict,  into  which  he  was  called  by  duty,  inclination, 
ambition  and  hate.  But  the  plan  which  made  him  eager 
to  put  aside  even  his  war  upon  France,  looked  to  a  larger 
prize  than  the  control  of  the  destinies  of  Italy.  The 


298  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

crusading  impulse,  so  far  as  it  affected  the  people  of 
Europe,  was  dead.  The  enthusiasm  which  had  swept 
thousands  from  their  homes,  careless  of  life  and  property, 
to  assoil  their  sins  and  wrest  the  tomb  of  Christ  from  the 
infidel,  could  not  be  roused  again.  For  a  century,  popes 
who  took  their  office  seriously  had  tried  in  vain  to  light 
that  old  flame  and  for  a  generation,  popes  who  looked  on 
the  office  of  Vicar  of  Christ  as  a  means  to  gratify  taste  or 
satisfy  family  ambitions,  had  used  the  duty  of  checking 
the  Turk  as  a  pretext  for  raising  money.  The  duty  was 
a  plain  one,  and  rested  no  longer  on  fanatic  hatred  of  the 
infidel  but  on  the  need  of  self  defense.  The  Turk,  firmly 
established  on  the  lower  Danube,  and  entrenched  at  Con- 
stantinople, had  made  evident  his  intention  of  conquering 
Europe  if  he  could.  He  was  not  really  a  menace.  Asia 
never  was  a  match  for  Europe,  and  the  forces  of  Mahomet 
II  were  less  able  to  beat  the  men  who  said  their  prayers 
in  Latin  than  the  army  of  Xerxes  was  to  master  the  men 
who  called  on  Zeus  in  Greek.  The  Teutonic  and  Romanic 
peoples  could  have  driven  him  back  over  the  Armenian 
mountains  even  without  the  help  of  Slav  and  Magyar. 
But  their  eagerness  to  fight  each  other  made  the  Turk  a 
menace.  His  galleys  swept  the  shores  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean, his  horsemen  ravaged  the  banks  of  the  Danube  and, 
by  a  diabolically  ingenious  circle  of  evil,  war  fed  war. 
Thousands  of  Christian  children,  whose  parents  had  died 
vainly  defending  their  homes,  bred  up  as  Mohammedans, 
menaced  the  cities  of  Europe  in  the  ranks  of  the  Janiza- 
ries. Thousands  of  Christian  captives  laboured  at  the 
oars  which  bore  blood  and  fire  and  slavery  along  the  coasts 
of  Italy. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  299 

The  crusading  impulse  was  dead,  but  the  dream  of 
pouring  an  army  down  the  Danube,  breaking  the 
gates  of  Constantinople  and  driving  the  terror 
and  shame  of  Christendom  across  the  Bosphorus  was 
still  to  fascinate  the  minds  of  many  a  European  ruler. 
Over  none  did  it  exercise  a  stronger  sway,  than  it  held 
from  boyhood  to  age  over  the  romantic  mind  of  Maxi- 
milian, always  starting  to  build  the  towers  of  his  castles 
in  the  air  before  he  sat  down  to  count  the  cost.  He  re- 
corded in  his  autobiography  that  his  mother  wanted  him 
named  Constantine  because  he  was  to  recover  Constanti- 
nople,1 and,  two  years  before  his  death,  he  told  the  Earl 
of  Worcester  that  he  had  never  cared  for  the  title  Em- 
peror of  the  Holy  German  Empire,  because  he  had  in- 
tended to  take  the  title  Emperor  of  Constantinople,  of 
which  he  was  rightful  heir.2  Although  an  assault  on 
Constantinople  was  an  undertaking  beyond  Maximilian's 
ability,  a  man  of  his  capacity  might  have  defended  Styria 
and  Carinthia  from  the  ceaseless  plundering  of  raiders. 
But  while  Maximilian  dreamed  of  storming  Constantino- 
ple, the  Turkish  horsemen  were  sweeping  his  people  into 
slavery,  and  he  took  the  field  against  nearly  everybody 
else  in  Europe  except  the  Turks. 

The  Emperor  Frederick  III  had  for  several  years 
withdrawn  entirely  from  public  business.  There  are 
no  indications  of  any  particular  affection  between  him 
and  his  son.  They  seldom  met  and  Frederick  did  little 
for  his  successor's  plans  except  to  hinder  them.  The  old 

1Jahrbucher  de  Kh.  S.,  page  423  (14). 

*  Letters  and  Papers  of  the  Reign  of  Henry  VIII.  Domestic  Series,  Vol.  II, 
part  II,  page  1022. 


300  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

man  had  suffered  for  some  time  with  decay  of  the  bones 
of  one  leg.  He  refused  an  operation  so  long  as  possible, 
and  even  in  the  agonies  of  amputation  at  the  knee,  called 
out, — "Alas,  Kaiser  Frederick  III,  that  you  must  carry  to 
all  posterity  the  nickname  of  the  'Halting'."  He  had  not 
to  bear  his  lameness  long.  He  was  passionately  fond 
of  fruit,  and  ate  in  the  early  morning  a  huge  quantity  of 
melons.  The  result  was  death  in  the  seventy-eighth  year 
of  his  age  (1493)- 

The  magnificent  funeral  of  his  father  only  interrupted 
for  a  time  the  plans  of  Maximilian  against  Constantinople. 
In  all  probability,  his  third  marriage  was  related  to  these. 
Lodovico  Sforza,  heir  presumptive  of  the  Duchy  of 
Milan,  which  he  ruled  as  regent  for  his  nephew,  was  not 
of  noble  descent.  His  grandfather,  Jacopo  Attendolo, 
was  a  peasant  who  had  become  one  of  the  celebrated  mer- 
cenary generals  of  his  day.  His  father,  a  great  soldier, 
had  married  the  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Milan  and 
seized  the  Duchy  at  his  father-in-law's  death.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  see  why  the  match  with  the  pretty  young  daughter 
of  this  house,  Lodovico's  niece,  was  accepted  by  Maximil- 
ian. He  never  cared  for  her  in  the  least,  and  her  plebeian 
descent  was  the  object  of  scorn  from  the  German  princes. 
It  is  probable  that  he  thought  he  could  use  against  the 
Turk  her  large  dowry  of  three  hundred  thousand  ducats, 
and  her  father,  whom  he  promised  to  invest  with  the 
Duchy  of  Milan,  would  protect  him  from  trouble  in 
Italy  and  send  troops  for  his  crusade.  Five  months  after 
this  marriage,  he  solemnly  joined  in  Antwerp  the  Order  of 
St.  George,  and  two  weeks  later,  he  sent  out  an  appeal  to 


MAXIMILIAN  I  301 

all  princes  of  the  world  to  join  the  Order  and  thus  become 
sworn  soldiers  of  the  cross  against  the  crescent. 

In  November,  1494,  he  issued  a  call  for  a  Reichstag-  next 
year  at  Worms,  to  make  preparations  for  a  stately  journey 
to  Rome,  that  he  might  receive  the  crown  of  the  Empire 
at  the  hands  of  the  Pope  and  then  march  at  the  head  of 
Europe  against  the  infidel. 

Before  the  Reichstag  assembled  in  March,  his  plans 
had  changed.  The  young  King  of  France  had  swept  all 
before  him  in  Italy.  Naples  lay  at  his  feet  and  he  began 
to  dictate  to  the  rulers  of  Italy  like  a  master  of  the  world. 
It  was  reported  that  he  intended  to  realize  Maximilian's 
daydream  to  drive  the  Turk  from  Europe  and  re-establish 
the  Roman  Empire  in  the  East.  But  the  hegemony  of 
Italy  was  easier  to  gain  than  to  keep.  The  states  which 
had  invited  his  expedition  against  Naples,  now  frightened 
at  his  power,  drew  together.  Naples,  Milan  and  the  Pope, 
formed  in  the  end  of  March,  the  Holy  League,  ostensibly 
against  the  Turk,  but  secretly  against  France.  Maximil- 
ian and  Ferdinand  of  Spain  were  its  allies. 

Maximilian's  entry  into  this  League  was  in  every  way 
natural.  Most  of  the  North  Italian  states  were  nominally 
fiefs  of  the  Empire,  whose  crown,  according  to  custom, 
must  be  taken  at  Rome.  It  was  difficult  for  him  to  keep 
out  of  any  fight.  An  expedition  across  the  Alps  prom- 
ised change,  adventure,  glory  and  it  was  hard  for  him  to 
see  the  rival  who  had  taken  his  betrothed  wife,  threaten- 
ing to  assume  that  central  position  in  the  world's  stage 
which  he  felt  belonged  by  divine  right  to  himself. 

Nor  was  he  singular  in  this  opinion.  One  of  the  most 
interesting  literary  remains  of  the  age  is  a  "Dream"  writ- 


302  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ten  in  Latin  in  1495  by  Hans  von  Hermansgriin,  a  noble- 
man who  had  studied  in  Rome  under  the  distinguished 
humanist  Pomponius  Laetus.  The  manuscript  was  cir- 
culated at  the  Reichstag  and  read  by  its  members.  It 
relates  how  the  writer,  returning  to  Saxony,  spent  the 
night  with  a  friend,  Henry  of  Amensdorff,  in  his  castle 
at  Rothenburg  on  the  Saale.  After  dinner  they  talked 
late  of  the  dangerous  situation  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
When  Hans  retired,  soothed  by  the  good  bed  and  the 
pleasant  murmur  of  the  river  which  bathed  the  castle 
walls,  he  soon  fell  into  a  deep  sleep.  He  saw  in  his  dream 
the  splendour  and  strength  of  the  Roman  Empire  assem- 
bled In  the  great  church  of  St.  Mauritius  at  Magdeburg. 
No  one  presided  over  the  assembly.  While  all  stood  in 
expectation,  three  men  of  superhuman  size,  wearing  im- 
perial diadems,  entered  the  church.  All  bowed  to  the 
ground  as  they  took  their  place  on  raised  seats.  One  of 
them  arose  and,  introducing  his  comrades  as  Charles 
the  Great  and  Otto  the  Great,  named  himself  as 
Frederick  Barbarossa,  "who  restored  the  falling 
state  of  the  Germans  and  bore  the  victorious 
eagles  over  land  and  sea  throughout  the  world." 
Checking  the  murmurs  of  applause  with  a  wave 
of  his  hand  and  looking  sternly  on  them,  he  addressed 
the  assembly.  He  pointed  out  that  the  Empire  was 
threatened  by  two  wars,  on  the  east  from  the  Turks,  on 
the  west  from  the  French.  Germany  could  meet  both 
these  dangers  if  it  were  not  for  the  decay  of  German  spirit. 
Luxury  had  imperiled  the  courage  and  ambition  of  her 
princes  and  nobles.  Military  discipline  was  undermined. 
Justice  was  no  longer  administered.  The  strength  of  the 


MAXIMILIAN  I  303 

nation  was  wasted  in  petty  civil  wars.  Let  them  wake 
from  their  sloth  and  disorder  to  remember  the  ancient 
glories  of  the  Empire.  They  ought  not  to  attack  the 
Turk  leaving  France  in  the  rear.  France  had  seized 
Italy,  and  they  must  hold  it  for  certain  that  they  could 
not  retain  the  orb  of  Empire  unless  they  wrested  Italy 
from  France.  And  France,  after  she  had  securely  sub- 
dued Italy,  could  with  the  wealth  thus  gained  conquer 
Germany.  Let  them  make  a  close  alliance  with  Venice 
and  Spain,  call  England  to  share  in  the  spoil  and  destroy 
France.  It  is  true  that  their  King,  Maximilian,  was  more 
fitted  for  the  distaff  than  the  spindle.  Sunk  in  slothful 
pleasures  he  had  let  the  King  of  France  conquer  Bun- 
gundy,  Piccardy,  Brittany,  and  the  Duchy  of  Milan, 
insult  his  daughter  and  seize  his  wife.  Let  the  princes, 
in  spite  of  this  weak  and  spiritless  King,  join  in  counsel 
and  save  the  Empire.  While  the  assembly  stood  aston- 
ished and  ashamed  at  this  oration  of  Frederick  Barba- 
rossa,  Hans  was  awakened  by  his  servant. 

Such  writing,  from  the  pen  of  one  of  the  few  humanists 
who  have  written  anything  but  praise  of  Maximilian, 
shows  that  the  Imperial  idea  and  its  expression  in  the  two 
great  wars  of  which  Maximilian  dreamed  so  long,  was  in 
the  air. 

But  the  bulk  of  the  Germans  with  political  power  did 
not  share  this  desire  to  make  great  exertions  in  order  that 
a  German  Emperor  might  control  the  Italians,  dictate  to 
the  Dutch  and  destroy  the  prestige  of  France.  The  mo- 
tives for  this  lack  of  practical  enthusiasm  for  the  ideal  of 
the  Emperor  as  the  master  of  Christendom,  were  both 
good  and  bad.  Some  of  the  princes  were  envious  of  the 


304  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Hapsburgs  and  ambitious  for  the  glory  of  their  own 
dynasties.  Some  princes  did  not  want  a  strong  Em- 
peror lest  he  might  curtail  their  own  independence. 
The  cities  hated  war  which  destroyed  their  trade  and 
weakened  them  before  the  princes  and  barons,  always 
ready  to  humiliate  or  oppress  them.  Everyone  shrank 
from  taxation,  and  nearly  everyone  felt  that  certain  re- 
forms in  those  German  speaking  states,  lying  between  the 
Alps  and  the  North  and  Baltic  seas,  which  formed  the 
core  of  the  Empire,  ought  to  precede  any  great  expendi- 
ture of  energy  toward  the  west,  the  east,  or  the  south. 

Maximilian  could  not  be  unaware  of  the  need  of  inter- 
nal reform,  which  had  been  ceaselessly  discussed  among 
Germans  since  he  was  born.  He  hoped,  and  not  alto- 
gether unreasonably,  to  lay  the  foundation  for  it  in  a 
revival  or  an  increase  of  the  control  of  the  Emperor  over 
the  different  parts  of  the  loose  confederation  of  which 
he  was  nominal  head.  Centralization  around  the  im- 
perial throne  was  his  solution  for  the  problem  of  reform. 
He  felt  that  to  get  the  Germans  to  follow  him  in  fight- 
ing for  the  glory  of  the  Empire  against  men  who  spoke 
another  tongue,  was  the  best  way  to  bring  Germany  into 
order  by  bringing  it  to  union. 

He  failed  to  persuade  the  Germans  to  adopt  his  plan 
and  the  reasons  for  his  failure  seem  to  have  been  in  him- 
self. They  may  be  stated  under  two  heads:  First, — in 
spite  of  his  marked  abilities,  certain  traits  of  his  char- 
acter roused  a  suspicion,  which  his  conduct  steadily  nour- 
ished, that  he  was  not  capable  of  conducting  large  enter- 
prises ;  though  the  difficulties  which  lay  before  him  were 
so  increased  by  this  very  suspicion  that  his  admirers 


MAXIMILIAN  I  305 

suggest  as  the  chief  reason  for  his  failure,  the 
unwillingness  of  small-minded  German  princes  to  fol- 
low him  in  large  enterprises.  Secondly, — the  suspicion, 
also  nourished  by  his  conduct,  that  he  regarded  the  glory 
of  the  Empire  as  an  appendage  to  the  glory  of  his  dynasty. 
It  is  impossible  to  read  through  the  letters  and  books  of 
Maximilian  without  seeing  that  this  suspicion  was  just. 
The  unconscious  self-betrayals  of  his  writings  show  so 
clearly  that  he  who  runs  may  read,  that  Maximilian  was 
Hapsburg  first  and  German  afterwards. 

The  Reichstag,  or  great  assembly  of  the  representatives 
of  the  states  of  the  Empire,  was  a  very  difficult  body  to 
lead  to  any  conclusion,  and  the  task  of  reform  was  pro- 
digious. In  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  the 
ambassador  Vincenzo  Quirini,  writing  to  the  Venetian 
Senate,  says  the  sovereign  states  of  the  Empire  consist 
of  two  kingdoms,  about  thirty  duchies  and  an  arch- 
duchy, four  marquisates,  a  great  number  of  countships, 
five  arch-episcopates,  twenty-five  bishoprics,  twenty  ab- 
beys, fifteen  priories,  five  knight's  orders  holding  sover- 
eign rights,  one  territory  and  a  hundred  free  cities.  He 
estimates  that  the  united  incomes  of  three  of  these  great 
princes  would  exceed  that  of  the  Emperor ;  the  incomes  of 
ten  of  them  would  be  more  than  double  Maximilian's 
revenues.  He  believes  that  the  total  income  of  the  free 
cities  exceeds  that  of  all  the  princes  of  the  Empire,  spirit- 
ual and  lay,  put  together.  From  these  political  units  four 
hundred  and  seventy-five  representatives  were  summoned 
to  the  Reichstag.  All  those  summoned  never  assembled. 
One  hundred  delegates,  many  of  them  holding  proxies, 
made  a  large  Reichstag.  The  great  cost  of  the  meetings, 


3o6  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

where  delegates  rivaled  one  another  in  the  size  of  their 
trains  and  the  display  of  their  life,  kept  many  from  com- 
ing. The  tedium  of  the  disordered,  complicated  and  in- 
effective procedure  of  the  three  chambers,  electors, 
princes  and  cities,  made  all  who  came  anxious  to  get 
away.  Nor  was  everybody  always  summoned.  There- 
fore the  Reichstag  which  met  at  Worms  in  1495,  some- 
times called  the  great  Reichstag,  with  five  electors,  one 
hundred  and  six  princes,  counts  and  lords,  and  the  repre- 
sentatives of  twenty-four  free  cities,  was  a  large  diet.1 

All  Maximilian  really  cared  about  was  a  grant  of  men 
and  money  to  attack  Charles  VIII.  What  the  enormous 
majority  of  the  Reichstag  chiefly  cared  about,  next  to  their 
own  territorial  interests,  was  the  reform  of  the  Empire. 
The  need  of  reform  could  hardly  be  exaggerated.  It 
appeared  most  acutely  in  two  closely  connected  disorders ; 
the  lack  of  any  proper  administration  of  justice,  and  the 
feud  right  which  filled  Germany  with  plundering  and 
killing.  Each  of  the  political  units  of  the  Empire  from 
the  smallest  count  to  an  elector,  thought  it  a  natural  right 
to  avenge  injuries  by  war  upon  a  neighbour.  And  the 
lack  of  a  proper  administration  of  justice  or  of  any  force 
to  compel  obedience  to  the  imperial  courts,  put  temptation 
to  vengeance  in  the  way  of  the  just  and  gave  an  excuse  for 
highway  robbery  to  every  lazy  and  rapacious  knight  who 
could  hire  a  dozen  mercenaries  to  serve  in  his  petty  "war" 
against  a  neighbouring  city.  Some  of  the  princes  main- 
tained order  in  their  own  borders,  but  in  whole  sections, 
particularly  in  South  Germany,  the  roads  were  unsafe  be- 
cause of  noble  highwaymen.  Occasionally  one  of  these 

1  Albcri   Relazioni,  etc.     Series  I,  Vol.  VI. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  307 

was  taken  ami  had  his  head  cut  off  in  the  market  place  of 
Nuremberg  or  Augsburg.  But  usually  when  the  burgher 
militia  marched  out  to  attack  these  pests  of  the  industrious 
inhabitants  of  town  or  country,  they  defied  attack  from 
the  walls  of  their  castle  on  the  crags,  or  took  refuge  in 
the  hills  still  thickly  covered  with  forests.  The  frequent 
feuds  of  the  greater  princes  and  the  cities  poured  out  little 
armies  killing  and  burning.  The  Empire  was  seldom 
free  from  at  least  one  of  these  feuds  raging  or  smould- 
ering. 

The  lesser  nobility  regarded  them  as  profitable  and 
legitimate  means  of  livelihood.  Gotz  von  Berlichingen 
was  a  robber  baron  with  a  sufficiently  good  conscience  to 
conclude  in  his  memoirs  recording  how  he  plundered  the 
burghers,  that  "Almighty  God  had  been  with  him,  won- 
derfully with  His  grace,  help  and  mercy  and  had  done 
more  for  him  than  he  had  for  himself."  He  tells  how, 
riding  in  the  night  with  a  prisoner  held  for  ransom,  he 
saw  wolves  suddenly  attack  a  flock  of  sheep.  "In  this 
sight  I  took  great  pleasure  and  wished  luck  to  them  and 
to  us.  Good  luck,  good  comrades,"  I  cried,  "good  luck 
everywhere.  I  held  it  for  a  good  omen  that  we  had  thus 
attacked  at  the  same  moment." 

He  was  not  without  a  rough  humour  and  describes  how 
he  waylaid  some  burghers  going  to  the  Frankfort  fair.  "I 
caught  five  or  six  of  them,  among  them  a  merchant  whom 
I  took  for  the  third  time  in  six  months,  besides  once  get- 
ting some  of  his  goods.  *  *  *  I  pretended  I  was 
going  to  cut  off  all  their  heads,  or  at  least  their  hands.  I 
made  them  kneel  down  and  lay  their  hands  on  a  block. 
Then  I  caught  the  first  with  my  foot  in  the  stern  and  gave 


3o8  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  second  a  good  one  on  the  ear ;  that  was  the  only  pun- 
ishment I  gave  them  and  then  I  let  them  go."  * 

Some  of  these  human  beasts  of  prey  were  less  good 
humoured,  for  a  popular  nobleman's  song  was, — "Wilt 
thou  get  a  living,  young  nobleman  ?  Then  follow  my  ad- 
vice. Lurk  in  the  greenwood.  When  the  peasant  drives 
through,  rush  out  at  him,  grab  him  by  the  collar,  rejoice 
thy  heart,  take  what  he  has,  cut  loose  his  horses,  be  quick 
and  hardy.  If  he  hasn't  a  penny,  then  slit  his  throat."  2 

We  must  not  exaggerate  this  evil.  The  German  cities 
had  grown  rich  in  spite  of  it.  It  did  not  prevail  in  all 
parts  of  the  land,  and  blackmail  would  usually  bring 
protection.  Nor  did  a  certain  chance  of  plundering  seem 
as  great  danger  to  a  generation  used  to  arms  as  it  would 
now.  The  prospect  of  giving  or  taking  death  was  not 
intolerable  to  a  large  part  of  the  community,  for  the 
world  was  used  to  violence  and  the  brute  in  man  nearer 
the  surface.  But  while  public  robbery  and  private  war 
was  being  repressed  in  most  other  European  lands  toward 
the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  Germany  was  going 
backward.  "The  German  people  loves  its  laws,"  wrote  a 
Frenchman  in  1493,  "but  the  complaints  are  universal 
that  justice  is  deeply  sunken  in  the  imperial  and  other 
courts  and  that  even  when  verdicts  are  rendered,  there  is 
no  quick  and  strict  fulfilment  of  them.  Therefore,  feuds 
have  long  been  a  dreadful  plague  and  robber  knights 
make  the  roads  unsafe  and  care  nothing  for  right  and 
justice."  8 

1  Lebensbeschreibung  des  Hitters  Gotz  von  Berlichingen. 

*  Quoted  by  Lamprecht,   Deutsche  Geschichte,   Berlin,   1896,  Vol.   V,   Erste 
Halfte,  page  80. 

*  Pierre  de  Froissard  Lettres,  5-6.     Quoted  Janssen,  Geschichte  des  deutschen 
Volkes,  Freiburg,  1881,  Vol.  I,  page  457. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  309 

Maximilian  could  not  have  felt  that  the  reform  of  this 
condition  was  his  first  care,  for  he  had  planned  to  stay 
only  a  couple  of  weeks  in  Worms,  and  then  to  carry  off 
the  princes  from  the  Rhine  to  the  mountains  of  Tirol; 
where  he  hoped  to  rouse  such  a  "sound  of  horns  and 
hunting  calls  that  the  Turks  and  all  other  bad  Christians 
should  hear  them  echo."  *  This  was  time  enough  to  get 
men  and  money.  It  was  not  time  enough  to  arrange  a 
reform  of  the  Empire.  His  fiery  call  to  meet  the  French 
in  defense  of  their  honour  and  freedom,  was  coldly  heard 
by  the  princes  to  whom  the  danger  did  not  seem  so  press- 
ing. And  in  the  demands  he  made  upon  them  Maximilian 
laid  bare  one  of  his  worst  traits, — a  certain  changeable- 
ness,  which  grew  upon  him  until  his  enemies  came  to  count 
on  it  as  an  ally.  Often  he  made  a  plan  of  action,  only  to 
suddenly  lay  it  aside  and  take  another,  not  because  cir- 
cumstances changed,  but  because  his  lively  fancy  had 
slipped  the  control  of  will  and  reason  and  borne  him 
headlong  in  some  other  direction.  He  kept  continually 
altering  his  demands  upon  the  Reichstag  at  Worms,  now 
asking  for  men  and  now  for  money,  now  bidding  the 
princes  follow  him  in  person,  now  pointing  toward  France 
and  now  toward  Italy.  The  answer  of  the  Reichstag  was 
firm  and  practically  unanimous.  It  would  not  make  any 
grant  for  war  until  complaints  were  redressed.  And  it 
would  not  discuss  a  new  military  organization  of  the 
Empire,  unless  provision  was  made  for  better  courts  and 
the  preservation  of  public  peace.  The  members  presented 
to  Maximilian  plans  for  an  imperial  court,  a  permanent 

1  Pruschenk  vertraulicher  brief wechsel,  etc.,  page  102, 


3io  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

"landfriede"  or  prohibition  of  private  war,  and  an  im- 
perial council. 

He  finally  agreed  that  a  new  imperial  court  should  be 
created,  to  sit  permanently  at  Frankfort  instead  of  follow- 
ing the  Emperor.  It  was  to  be  composed  half  of  knights 
and  half  of  doctors  of  law.  The  Emperor  was  to  name 
the  chief  judge.  For  the  other  places  nominations  were 
to  be  made  by  princes,  assemblies  and  cities,  and  a  commit- 
tee of  the  Reichstag  was  to  choose  among  them.  He 
also  accepted  an  "ewige  landfriede,"  or  lasting  prohibi- 
tion of  private  war,  in  place  of  the  suspension  for  ten 
years  then  ostensibly  in  force.1  But  the  Imperial  Council 
Maximilian  absolutely  refused.  The  proposition  was  to 
put  the  executive  power  of  the  Empire  into  the  hands  of 
a  Council  of  seventeen;  he  was  to  name  the  president; 
each  of  the  six  active  electors  to  name  a  member,  the 
other  ten  members,  four  from  the  archdioceses,  four  from 
the  civil  divisions  of  the  Empire,  two  from  the  cities,  were 
to  be  chosen  by  the  Reichstag,  and  the  council  thus  con- 
stituted was  to  fill  vacancies.  Such  a  plan  made  the 
Empire  an  oligarchy  where  the  electors  or  greatest  princes 
held  the  chief  power.  It  was  perhaps  not  to  be  expected 
that  Maximilian  would  accept  such  a  change.  But  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  Empire  was  then  nothing  but  a 
name,  and  the  rights  he  indignantly  refused  to  yield  only 
paper  ones.  Indeed,  at  that  very  moment,  the  titular 
Emperor  of  Germany  was  vainly  begging  the  representa- 
tives of  his  subjects  for  a  few  thousand  men  and  a  couple 
of  hundred  thousand  florins.  The  evils  of  which  his 

1  Ausgewahlte  Urkunden,  etc.  Altmann  und  Bernheitn,  Berlin,  1895,  page 
164. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  311 

subjects  complained  were  patent  and  undeniable.     He 
must  either  accept  this  plan  to  destroy  them,  or  propose 
another  which  was  effective.     Two  hundred  years  later, 
William   III,   no   lover   of    constitutional   government, 
granted  all  the  parliamentary  privileges  of  England  in 
order  to  secure  her  support  in  his  war  against  France. 
If  Maximilian  had  been  a  great  ruler,  consulting  facts 
rather  than  his  desires,  and  with  any  foresight  of  the 
way  men  would  act,  he  ought  either  to  have  done  the 
same,  or  else,  abandoning  his  war  with  France,  have  de- 
voted all  his  energies  to  crushing  the  oligarchical  opposi- 
tion by  proposing  a  reform  effective  enough  to  do  what 
needed  to  be  done,  and  thus  rally  a  party  round  himself. 
What  he  did  do,  was  to  accept  the  proposed  landfriede 
and  imperial  court,  take  the  vote  of  a  special  aid  and  the 
establishment  of  a  regular  imperial  tax,  half  poll  tax  and 
half  property  tax,  and  propose  an  Imperial  Council  de- 
pendent on  himself  and  acting  only  in  his  absence.     The 
notorious  corruption  among  Maximilian's  ministers,  and 
the  lack  of  financial  skill  which  left  him  at  the  opening 
of  the  Reichstag  unable  to  pay  the  inn  bills  of  his  wife  in 
the  Netherlands,  made  the  Reichstag  afraid  to  trust  the 
expenditure  of  the  new  taxes  to  such  a  body.     They 
finally  agreed  to  substitute  for  an  Imperial  Council,  a 
yearly  meeting  of  the  Reichstag  to  see  that  the  reforms 
were  carried  out.     This   failed  to  give   Germany  the 
stronger  executive  she  needed,  but  the  radical  reform 
party  was  tired  of  the  long  discussion ;  split  up  by  jealousy 
and  selfishness.     Maximilian  thought  seriously  of  noth- 
ing except  raising  enough  money  to  cross  the  Alps. 

The  money  came  in  very  slowly.     The  tax  was  voted 


3i2  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

but  not  paid.  Maximilian  called  a  new  Reichstag  ta 
meet  in  the  Summer  of  1496,  and  reached  Italy  in  August, 
1496,  with  only  four  thousand  men  and  not  a  single 
German  prince  behind  him.  The  French  King  had  left 
Italy,  and  his  easy  conquest  of  Naples  had  been  lost  before 
the  troops  of  Spain  and  Venice.  It  was  therefore  enough 
for  Maximilian,  as  protector  of  the  fiefs  of  the  Empire 
in  Italy,  to  bar  the  Alpine  passes  against  his  return  and 
subdue  his  ally,  Florence.  But  Maximilian  proposed  the 
largest  plans.  He  was  to  embark  a  great  force  and  attack 
France  from  the  southern  sea  coast,  while  the  German 
princes,  under  the  lead  of  the  Elector  of  Mayence,  the 
head  of  the  Reform  party  he  had  disappointed  in  Worms, 
was  to  invade  France  from  the  west.  Another  imperial 
army  was  to  descend  into  Italy  over  the  Alps.  This  was 
great  strategy,  but  for  the  tactics  to  express  it  Maximilian 
had  only  four  thousand  men,  reserves  not  mustered  except 
in  his  own  mind,  princes  who  did  not  want  to  fight  France, 
allies  some  of  whom  wished  him  back  over  the  Alps. 
His  treasury  was  so  empty  that  he  was  obliged  to  beg  a 
loan  of  two  hundred  or  three  hundred  ducats  to  pay  his 
table  expenses.  A  risky  dash  to  take  Livorno,  the  sea- 
port of  Florence,  failed.  Maximilian,  discouraged  and 
disgusted  with  the  insubordination  of  his  allies,  suddenly 
gave  up  the  attack  on  Florence,  and,  in  a  humour  so  bad 
that  he  even  refused  his  beloved  sport  of  hunting,  with- 
drew over  the  Alps  in  the  end  of  December,  1496.  The 
four  months  of  his  campaign  in  Italy  had  only  confirmed 
the  unwillingness  of  the  German  princes  to  see  in  him 
another  Frederick  Barbarossa,  sent  to  restore  the  glory 
of  the  Germanic  Empire,  and  greatly  injured  the  reputa- 


MAXIMILIAN  I  313 

tion  as  a  soldier  he  had  gained  in  the  Netherlands  and 
Hungary. 

It  was  eighteen  months  later  before  he  again  addressed 
the  German  princes  on  his  duty  to  fight  France.  He  sum- 
moned the  electors  and  some  of  the  other  princes  of  the 
Reichstag  to  his  presence,  at  Freiburg,  in  June,  1498. 
Charles  VIII  had  died  in  April,  1498,  and  Maximilian 
thought  it  an  excellent  time  to  regain  his  rights.  In  the 
name  of  his  son,  Philip,  he  peremptorily  demanded 
the  return  of  the  duchy  of  Burgundy,  seized  by 
the  French  King  at  the  death  of  Philip's  maternal  grand- 
father. He  raised  seven  thousand  men  and  threw  them 
across  the  border  of  France  for  a  demonstration,  but  his 
allies  of  the  League  did  not  want  to  back  this  war  upon 
the  new  ruler  of  France,  and  Maximilian's  son  Philip,  in 
whose  name  he  waged  it,  agreed  to  do  homage  to  the  King 
of  France  for  Flanders  and  Artois  and  leave  the  question 
of  Burgundy  to  be  settled,  without  war  or  law  process,  by 
common  agreement. 

Maximilian  was  not  turned  aside  from  his  intention  by 
the  fact  that  no  one  except  himself  wanted  to  fight  France 
about  Burgundy.  He  made  to  the  princes  he  summoned 
to  his  presence,  a  most  impassioned  address.  It  was  now 
impossible,  he  said,  to  recover  the  heritage  of  the  House 
of  Hapsburg  his  son  had  surrendered,  but  he  meant  to 
give  France  a  slap  in  the  face  which  should  be  remem- 
bered for  a  century.  He  had  been  betrayed  by  the  Lom- 
bards and  misled  by  the  Germans.  He  would  say  that,  if 
he  had  to  throw  the  crown  from  his  head  and  tread  it 
under  foot.  If  he  was  really  deserted  by  the  Empire,  he 
would  renounce  his  imperial  oath,  for  he  had  sworn  also 


RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

to  defend  the  interests  of  the  House  of  Austria.  He 
peremptorily  demanded  an  answer,  "yes"  or  "no," 
whether  the  Empire  would  back  him  in  punishing  France. 
In  vain,  Berthold,  Archbishop  of  Mainz,  pointed  out  that 
the  Reichstag  had  the  right  to  be  consulted  about  the  use 
and  need  of  a  war  before  they  voted  supplies  for  it. 
Maximilian  answered  he  would  not  be  bound  hand  and 
foot  and  hung  up  on  the  wall  like  Gunther  on  the 
Nibelungenlied.  To  this  mood  the  princes  yielded  some- 
what, very  much  as  men  yield  to  quiet  an  excited  woman, 
but  though  he  might  thus  have  his  own  way  to  some  ex- 
tent, Maximilian,  in  the  long  run,  only  weakened  his 
ability  to  lead  Germany. 

He  was  certainly  not  leading  Germany  in  the  direction 
of  reform.  The  financial  basis  of  the  whole  scheme 
adopted  at  Worms  in  1495  was  the  common  tax,  and 
when  inquiry  was  made  about  the  collections,  it  appeared 
that  in  the  Hapsburg  Netherlands  the  subjects  of  Maxi- 
milian's son,  for  the  most  part,  bluntly  refused  to  pay,  and, 
in  Maximilian's  Austrian  lands,  the  collection  had  not 
been  proportionately  as  successful  as  in  several  other 
principalities  of  the  Empire.  Maximilian  had  been  en- 
gaged for  months  in  skillfully  reorganizing  their  admin- 
istration, but  he  had  taken  no  effective  steps  to  force  pay- 
ment from  recalcitrants.  This  inevitably  suggested  to  the 
princes  that  he  took  no  deep  interest  in  anything  except 
the  filling  of  his  war  chest.  This  suspicion  was  increased 
by  the  obvious  fact  that  his  attention  could  not  be  di- 
verted from  demands  for  an  advance  on  the  uncollected 
tax,  to  discussions  of  methods  which  might  make  its 
future  collection  surer  and  easier.  For  Maximilian  often 


MAXIMILIAN  I  315 

appears  like  an  excitable  child  when  it  dashes  toward  the 
object  of  momentary  desire,  reckless  of  obstacles  and,  fall- 
ing, rises  again  to  continue  the  impetuous  run. 

Two  campaigns,  one  to  repulse  a  French  raid  on 
Franche  Comte,  the  other  a  vain  attempt  to  reconquer  the 
revolted  Duchy  of  Guelders  for  the  Hapsburgs,  engaged 
him  in  the  Autumn  of  1498,  and,  before  the  latter  was  fin- 
ished, Maximilian  had  on  his  hands  the  first  war  in  which 
his  armies  met  continued  disaster  and  defeat. 

The  people  who  lived  in  the  mountain  lands  lying  be- 
tween the  French  border,  the  angle  of  the  upper  Rhine 
with  the  lake  of  Constance,  and  the  Italian  slopes  of  the 
Alps,  had  long  been  estranged  from  other  Germans  and 
independent  of  the  Empire.  Neither  Emperor  nor  Reich- 
stag could  easily  exercise  any  efficient  control  over  the 
larger  states  of  Germany,  and  this  independence  had  been 
increased  by  defensive  Leagues  among  the  political  units 
of  the  Empire.  For  generations,  many  cities  of  the  north 
coasts  and  a  part  of  the  watershed  of  the  Rhine  and  Elbe, 
had  been  united  in  the  Hanseatic  Union.  Frederick  III 
had  founded  the  Swabian  League.  In  the  same  way  the 
Swiss  cantons  were  bound  together  in  a  league.  And  as 
time  went  on,  this  Swiss  League  had  become  practically  an 
independent  Republic  owning  merely  nominal  allegiance 
to  the  Emperor.  This  situation  was  to  a  great  extent 
based  on  a  complete  estrangement  of  feeling.  The  peas- 
ants and  burghers  who  pastured  cattle,  tilled  land,  manu- 
factured and  traded  in  those  mountain  valleys,  had  de- 
stroyed feudalism  as  a  governmental  system,  rejected  its 
fundamental  ideas  and  established,  either  democracies  or 
commercial  oligarchies  with  democratic  features  in  their 


316  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

government.  The  German  nobles,  clinging  to  their  feudal 
rights,  the  German  princes  trying  to  build  absolutism  on 
the  ruins  of  feudalism  and  the  liberties  of  the  cities,  had 
for  the  Swiss  that  dislike  of  aristocrats  and  absolutists  for 
republican  neighbours  which  seems  in  the  long  run  to  be 
inevitable.  Among  some  of  the  nobles  this  dislike  was 
changed  to  hatred  by  fear.  The  idea  of  questioning  the 
"right"  of  one  family  to  tax  other  families  was  con- 
tagious, and  some  inhabitants  near  the  borders  of  the 
Swiss  League,  saw  in  it  a  ready  means  to  escape  the 
claims  of  their  feudal  lords.  In  some  places  the  bitter- 
ness spread  to  the  population  because  of  border  raids. 
It  was  expressed  on  the  northern  side  by  insults,  surviving 
in  songs  and  proverbs,  hard  for  any  one  to  bear.  Moun- 
taineers are  apt  to  be  quick  of  their  hands,  and  the  de- 
scendants of  the  people  who,  at  Morgarten  and  Sempach, 
at  Granson,  Morat  and  Nancy,  had  rolled  the  horse  and  his 
rider  under  foot,  were  none  too  apt  at  taking  the  disdain 
of  men  who  had  not  yet  waked  up  to  the  fact  that  the  time 
was  past  when  knights  could  treat  all  peasants  and 
burghers  as  they  choose.  Arid  pride  of  arms  and  the 
commercial  spirit,  made  them  eager  for  gain,  and  not 
more  scrupulous  than  their  neighbours  how  they  got  it. 
There  was  a  feeling,  therefore,  that  the  Swiss  were  trou- 
blesome and  disloyal  members  of  the  Empire  who  ought 
to  be  put  down. 

They  had  beaten  Maximilian's  ancestors  and  killed  his 
father-in-law,  but  he  wanted  to  be  at  peace  with  them. 
Not  out  of  fear.  Maximilian  never  was  afraid  of  any- 
thing. He  dashed  alone  into  a  strangling  swamp  to  kill 
a  savage  boar,  or  led  a  handful  of  men  onto  the  locked 
shields  and  great  pikes,  with  the  same  reckless  courage. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  317 

Maximilian  disliked  the  Swiss  war  because  he  did  not 
want  to  be  diverted  from  his  hopes  of  getting  revenge 
on  France  and  wresting  glory  from  the  Turks.  The  men 
of  the  Alpine  valleys  were  the  best  mercenaries  in  Europe. 
He  needed  them  behind  his  banner,  and  he  disliked  to 
increase  their  tendency  to  take  the  prompter  pay  of 
France.  The  cultivated  patrician,  Willibald  Pirkheimer, 
a  great  friend  and  admirer  of  Maximilian,  commanded  the 
Nuremberg  contingent  in  the  Swiss  war.  In  his  account 
of  it1  he  lays  the  responsibility  for  its  outbreak  at  the 
doors  of  "those  who  were  dear  to  Maximilian."  Their 
injuries  and  exactions  provoked  it  against  his  will.  And 
it  broke  out  when  he  was  absent  in  another  vain  attempt 
to  compel  the  people  of  Guelders  to  give  up  a  native 
dynasty  and  acknowledge  the  house  of  Hapsburg.  The 
cities,  Pirkheimer  says,  sent  their  contingents  unwillingly 
to  follow  the  imperial  banner  because  they  knew  that  the 
war  had  been  brought  on  "not  of  necessity,  but  only  by 
impotence  and  arrogance."  The  nobles  who  had  done  so 
much  to  provoke  it  were  "not  so  bold  in  resisting  an  army 
as  apt  at  robbery  and  the  plundering  of  travellers,  for 
they  were  strenuous  in  that  exaction,  which  they  had 
inherited  from  their  ancestors,  thinking  it  no  small  proof 
of  courage  and  nobility  to  live  like  a  thief  from  plunder 
and  on  the  misery  of  others."  He  gives  the  most  un- 
bounded praise  to  the  Swiss  militia.  They  were  sworn 
under  penalty  of  death  to  instant  obedience,  to  silence  in 
fight,  never  to  leave  the  ranks  or  begin  flight,  touch  the 

1  Willibald  Pirkheimers  Schweizer  Krieg  herausgegeben  von  Karl  Ruck. 
Munchen,  1895.  Quoted  in  following  citations,  pages  67,  83,  89,  72,  110,  98; 
and  elsewhere  summarized. 


3i8  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

spoils  or  burn  buildings  without  orders,  to  abstain  from 
all  dishonour  to  churches  or  violence  to  non-combatants, 
to  kill  all  captives  made  during  battle  and  not  to  hold  them 
for  ransom.  In  consequence  of  this  oath  and  their  disci- 
pline, Maximilian's  offer  of  a  hundred  gold  pieces  for  a 
prisoner  to  examine,  was  vain.  "They  could  be  killed, 
but  in  no  way  could  they  be  captured." 

The  contest  was  fearfully  bloody  and  wasteful.  Pirk- 
heimer  says:  "In  a  large  mountain  valley  whose  vil- 
lages were  burnt  and  deserted,"  he  met  "two  old  women 
driving  about  forty  little  boys  and  girls  like  a  flock  of 
sheep.  All  were  starved  to  the  most  extreme  emacia- 
tion and,  except  that  they  moved,  looked  not  unlike 
corpses,  so  that  it  was  horrible  to  see.  I  asked  the  old 
women  whither  they  were  leading  their  miserable  flock. 
They,  astonished  and  hardly  able  to  open  their  lips  for 
sorrow  and  hunger,  answered  I  should  soon  see  whither 
they  led  their  wretched  herd.  Hardly  had  they  replied 
when  we  came  to  a  meadow.  They  turned  in  and  falling 
on  their  knees  began  to  eat  grass  like  cattle,  except  that 
they  picked  it  first  with  their  hands  instead  of  biting  it 
from  the  roots.  They  had  already  learned  the  varieties 
of  the  herbage,  and  knew  what  was  bitter  or  insipid,  what 
sweeter  or  pleasanter  to  the  taste.  I  was  horrified  at  so 
dreadful  a  sight,  and  stood  for  a  long  time  like  one  who 
can  not  trust  his  senses.  Then  the  old  woman  asked, — 
Do  you  see  why  this  wretched  crowd  is  led  here?  Well 

would  it  have  been  if  none  of  them  had  been  born 

Their  fathers  have  fallen  by  the  sword,  their  mothers  have 
died  of  starvation,  their  property  has  been  carried  off  as 
booty,  their  houses  burnt ;  we  two  wretches,  tottering  with 


MAXIMILIAN  I  319 

age,  are  left  to  lead  this  miserable  herd  like  beasts  to 
pasture  and,  so  far  as  we  can,  keep  them  alive  on  grass. 
We  hope  that  a  short  time  will  release  them  and  us  from 
our  miseries.  They  were  twice  as  many,  but  in  a  brief 
time  they  are  reduced  to  this  number,  since  daily  some  die 
of  want  and  hunger,  far  happier  in  a  quick  death  than  in 
longer  life."  When  I  had  seen  and  heard  these  things  I 
could  not  restrain  my  tears,  pitying  the  pitiable  human 
lot,  and  detesting,  as  every  true  man  ought,  the  fury  of 
war." 

For  six  months,  disaster  crowded  upon  disaster  to  the 
imperial  arms.  The  undisciplined  levies  badly  led,  could 
not  stand  against  the  Swiss.  At  Dorneck,  for  example, 
four  thousand  confederates  surprised  fifteen  thousand  im- 
perialists, killed  three  thousand  men  and  put  the  army  to 
utter  rout  with  the  loss  of  their  banners  and  cannon. 
Maximilian  returning  from  the  Netherlands  with  six 
thousand  troops,  faced  his  losses  like  a  man.  Pirkheimer, 
his  companion  in  evil  days,  says  that  in  the  midst  of 
"irreparable  misfortunes  ...  he  could  never  see  the 
smallest  sign  of  perturbation  in  the  Emperor."  But  he 
could  not  turn  the  tide,  impose  order  upon  his  armies  or 
put  sense  or  spirit  into  his  worthless  generals.  In  Sep- 
tember, 1499,  he  accepted  the  good  offices  of  his  father- 
in-law,  the  Duke  of  Milan,  for  a  peace.  The  treaty  as- 
sured the  practical  independence  of  the  confederates; 
though  they  remained  nominally  subject  to  the  Empire  un- 
til the  peace  of  Westphalia  in  1648.  Within  two  years 
the  cities  of  Bale  and  Schaffhausen  entering  the  league  of 
the  Swiss,  gave  them  fortresses  and  gates  toward  the  east 
and  the  north,  and  their  reputation  for  fighting  became  so 


320  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

great,  that,  from  the  day  of  her  reception  as  a  member  of 
the  league,  Bale  "substituted  for  the  usual  guard  of  her 
gates  an  old  woman  armed  with  a  distaff."1 

Louis  XII  of  France  had  taken  advantage  of  the  Swiss 
war  to  make  himself  stronger  in  Italy.  He  had  made  an 
alliance  with  Venice  which  freed  his  path  for  an  attack 
on  Milan,  whose  ducal  crown  he  claimed  by  the  poor  title 
that  his  grandmother  had  been  a  Visconti.  He  took  the 
city  with  little  trouble,  for  Maximilian  could  not  help  his 
father-in-law,  nor  could  Ludovico  hire  Swiss  mercenaries 
to  defend  himself.  He  could  only  flee  to  the  mountains 
of  Tirol.  When  he  had  made  peace  between  the  Swiss 
and  Maximilian,  he  raised  an  army  and  came  down  to  at- 
tack Milan.  The  people  had  found  the  plundering  of  the 
French  worse  than  the  taxes  of  Ludovico.  They  threw 
open  their  gates  to  him  with  an  enthusiasm  equal  to  that 
which  had  welcomed  his  enemies.  But  he  was  to  feel 
one  more  turn  of  the  wheel  of  fortune.  Two  months 
later,  as  he  stood  prepared  for  battle  with  a  new  French 
army,  his  Swiss  mercenaries  revolted  and  refused  to  fight 
their  compatriots  who  followed  the  lilies.  Ludovico,  at- 
tempting to  escape,  was  handed  over  to  his  enemy  by 
some  of  his  own  men,  and  carried  to  France,  where  he 
died,  ten  years  later,  a  prisoner  in  the  castle  of  Loches. 

Maximilian  again  appealed  to  the  Reichstag  for  an  army 
to  repress  the  insolence  of  France  in  seizing  Milan,  which 
was  a  fief  of  the  Empire.  Instead,  the  Reichstag  adopted 
a  plan  for  a  regular  army  of  about  thirty  thousand  men. 
It  was  to  be  raised  by  every  four  hundred  inhabitants  with 

1  Daguet  Histoire  de  la  Confederation  Suisse.  Septteme  edition,  Paris,  1879. 
Vol.  I,  page  401. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  321 

property  contributing  to  the  pay  and  equipment  of  one 
infantry  man.  In  addition  the  pastors  throughout  Ger- 
many were  to  make  collections  in  the  churches  for  the  de- 
fense of  the  Empire.  For  this  army,  Maximilian's  broth- 
er-in-law, Duke  Albert  of  Bavaria,  was  named  general, 
and  the  Emperor's  command,  even  when  he  was  present  on 
the  field  of  battle,  was  much  limited  by  the  authority  of 
the  general.  The  Emperor  no  longer  felt  strong  enough 
to  decline  the  Reichsregiment  or  governing  council  he 
had  declined  at  Worms  in  1495,  nor  could  he  persuade 
the  Reichstag  or  the  Regiment  to  interfere  in  Italy  for  the 
protection  of  the  nominal  vassals  of  the  Empire  against 
France. 

There  is  some  reason  to  suspect  that  he  was  not  quite  as 
determined  as  his  speeches  declared,  to  make  war  to  the 
end  on  France.  He  hated  the  house  of  Valois.  He  had 
fought  it ;  but  he  now  hoped  to  enter  into  alliance  with  it 
for  the  gain  of  his  own  family.  His  son,  Philip,  was 
very  anxious  to  avoid  further  contest  between  the  Haps- 
burgs  and  Valois.  Three  deaths  in  three  years  had  made 
his  wife  heiress  to  the  thrones  of  Castile  and  Aragon. 
To  secure  her  heritage  and  her  claim  on  Naples,  he  joined 
her  father  Ferdinand  in  seeking  the  friendship  of  France. 
On  the  loth  of  August,  1501,  a  marriage  treaty  was 
signed  engaging  Philip's  infant  son,  Charles,  to  marry 
Louis's  infant  daughter,  Claudia.  In  October  of  the  same 
year,  Maximilian  enlarged  this  into  a  family  compact 
between  Hapsburg  and  Valois ;  the  first  of  a  series  of  such 
agreements  between  the  two  houses.  The  marriage  of 
Carl  and  Claudia  was  to  be  matched  by  a  marriage  be- 
tween the  Dauphin  and  Philip's  daughter,  The  King  of 


322  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

France  promised  to  favour  so  far  as  he  was  able,  the  ex- 
pedition of  Maximilian  to  Rome  to  obtain  the  imperial 
crown,  and  also  bound  himself  to  support  the  claims  of 
the  Hapsburgs  on  the  thrones  of  Spain,  of  Hungary  and 
Bohemia.  Within  three  years,  he  was  to  join  the  other 
rulers  of  Europe  in  making  under  Maximilian,  an  ex- 
pedition against  the  Turk.  In  return,  Louis,  after  taking 
the  oath  for  Milan  as  a  fief  of  the  Empire,  was  to  become 
its  Duke.  The  deposed  Ludovico  was  to  have  the  free- 
dom of  five  miles  around  his  prison  and  be  generously 
entertained. 

This  agreement,  like  those  which  followed  it,  skillfully 
flattered  Maximilian's  two  ruling  passions.  It  promised 
to  increase  the  glory  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg,  and 
held  out  the  prospect  of  gratifying  that  desire  to  march 
on  Constantinople  at  the  head  of  Europe,  which  was  a 
compound  of  his  instinctive  longing  to  hold  the  center  of 
the  world's  stage  and  his  sense  of  duty  as  the  first  layman 
of  Christendom;  the  only  one  who  communed  in  both 
kinds,  the  God  appointed  protector  of  the  church. 

The  peace  thus  won,  Maximilian  tried  in  vain  to  use  in 
his  long  continued  attempt  to  conquer  the  Duchy  of 
Guelders  and  in  preparations  for  crossing  the  Alps  to 
be  crowned  in  Rome.  From  these  enterprises  he  was  di- 
verted by  a  war  in  the  heart  of  Germany,  during  which, 
by  skillfully  taking  advantage  of  events,  he  gained  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life  a  large  measure  of  control  over  the 
Empire  of  which  he  was  the  titular  head. 

On  the  first  of  December,  1503,  Duke  George  of  the 
Bavarian  house  of  Wittelsbach  died.  The  possessions  of 
the  house  had  been  divided  about  a  century  before  between 


MAXIMILIAN  I  323 

three  lines.  One  of  them  had  died  out,  and  George  had 
inherited  from  his  father  and  his  cousin.  He  left  there- 
fore great  possessions  in  land  and  treasure  which  had 
gained  him  the  surname  of  the  "Rich."  By  an  old  law  of 
the  house,  excluding  women  from  inheritance,  his  cousins 
Albert  and  Wolfgang  of  the  Munich  line,  were  heirs. 
But  George  had  made  a  will  leaving  everything  to  his 
only  daughter  outside  of  a  nunnery,  Elizabeth,  who  was 
the  wife  of  Rupert,  son  of  the  Elector  of  the  Pfalz. 
Maximilian  considered  this  will  and  the  house  law  of  the 
dynasty  of  Wittelsbach  it  violated,  encroachments  upon 
his  rights  as  over-lord  of  the  fiefs  of  the  Empire.  Al- 
bert was  married  to  his  sister,  Kunigunde,  and  Max- 
imilian saw  his  chance,  on  the  ground  of  his  right  to  dis- 
pose of  vacant  fiefs  of  the  Empire,  to  increase  the  power 
of  the  Hapsburgs  at  the  expense  of  the  quarreling  heirs 
of  their  great  rival,  the  house  of  Wittelsbach.  He  im- 
mediately acknowledged  Albert  and  Wolfang  as  heirs 
of  George,  in  exchange  for  an  agreement  signed  by  Albert 
to  come  to  a  friendly  settlement  of  Maximilian's  claims 
upon  the  inheritance.  The  Assembly  of  the  Estates  of  the 
lands  in  dispute,  also  begged  Maximilian  to  avoid  civil 
war  by  deciding  the  question  of  inheritance.  Maximilian 
appointed  a  day  when  he  would  hear  all  interested  at 
Augsburg.  To  the  assembled  claimants  and  representa- 
tives he  announced  that  George  the  Rich,  by  making  a  will 
in  spite  of  his  warning  and  against  feudal  laws,  had  for- 
feited to  his  over-lord  all  his  property  in  land  and  people, 
artillery,  provisions  and  furniture.  In  short,  everything 
the  Duke  had,  except  cash  and  jewels,  was  now  by  law  the 
property  of  Maximilian.  His  previous  investure  of 


324  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

George  and  Wolfgang  only  extended,  therefore,  to  what 
they  were  legally  entitled  to  receive.  He  did  not  propose, 
however,  to  enforce  his  rights,  and  would  take  only  two 
cities,  four  castles,  three  count  ships,  about  one  hundred 
thousand  gulden  of  taxes  and  crops  and  all  the  debts  he 
owed  to  the  late  Duke.  The  remainder  he  proposed  to 
divide  between  the  two  brothers  and  Elizabeth.  Her 
husband,  Rupert,  refused  to  accept  this  award  and,  after 
vain  attempts  to  arrange  a  division  acceptable  to  all  claim- 
ants, both  parties  left  Augsburg  to  prepare  for  war. 

Rupert  began  it  by  seizing,  with  the  help  of  the  in- 
habitants, several  cities  which  had  been  consigned  to  re- 
gents until  the  dispute  was  settled,  and  Maximilian 
launched  the  ban  of  the  Empire,  which  made  him  and  his 
wife  outlaws.  Rupert's  father,  the  Elector,  backed  him, 
and  he  used  his  dead  father-in-law's  treasure  to  hire  mer- 
cenaries from  Bohemian  noblemen.  The  war  was  a  slow 
one,  fought  castle  by  castle  and  raid  after  raid.  Brother 
faced  brother,  and  the  poor  peasant  was  slaughtered  and 
plundered  by  both  sides.  In  the  midst  of  it  all  Rupert 
died,  and  his  wife  followed  him  to  the  grave  about  a 
month  later.  Their  faithful  captains  vainly  tried  to  keep 
up  the  contest  for  the  claims  of  their  children.  And  their 
hopes  depended  on  the  arrival  of  a  strong  body  of  Bo- 
hemian mercenaries.  By  forced  marches  Maximilian  fell 
unexpectedly  on  this  force.  They  stood  fiercely  at  bay 
behind  their  great  wooden  shields.  Maximilian  led  his 
men  at  arms  against  the  mass,  and,  after  a  desperate  fight 
where  he  was  saved  from  being  unhorsed  and  trampled 
to  death  only  by  the  devotion  of  one  of  his  followers, 
broke  into  their  phalanx.  Four-fifths  of  the  Bohemians 


MAXIMILIAN  I  325 

were  killed  on  the  spot  or  in  flight,  the  rest  were  taken 
prisoners.  This  fight  decided  the  war.  It  dragged  along 
in  places,  but  Maximilian's  decision  was  enforced;  the 
children  of  Rupert  and  Elizabeth  received  the  treasure 
and  the  lands  north  of  the  Danube,  while  Albert  and 
Wolfgang  received  the  lands  south  of  the  Danube.  Max- 
imilian took  for  himself  what  he  originally  claimed,  and 
rewarded  some  of  his  faithful  followers  out  of  the  estate 
he  had  thus  administered  with  fire  and  sword.  The  only 
people  who  got  nothing  but  loss  out  of  the  contest,  were 
the  peasants  whose  labour  gave  value  to  the  lands  which 
these  nobles  and  princes  fought  over. 

In  the  summer  of  1505,  Maximilian  entered  into 
Cologne  in  triumph,  marching  in  the  party-coloured  cos- 
tume of  a  landsknecht,  the  great  eighteen  foot-spear  over 
his  shoulder.  Nearly  a  thousand  princes  and  noblemen 
followed  him,  and  sat  down  to  a  banquet  in  honour  of  the 
victory  which  Philip,  aided  by  Maximilian's  skill  in  hand- 
ling artillery,  had  just  won  in  Guelders.  The  stronghold 
of  the  dynasty  supported  by  France  and  the  people,  had 
fallen,  and  the  Duke  was  driven  out,  leaving  Guelders  in 
the  possession  of  the  Hapsburgs. 

Then  began  a  period  of  four  years  when  there  was  no 
open  and  active  party  of  opposition  to  Maximilian  in  Ger- 
many. Berthold  of  Mayence,  the  head  of  the  reform 
party,  had  died  in  December,  1 504.  Many  of  the  genera- 
tion of  princes  which  supported  his  attempts  to  bring  Ger- 
many to  law  and  order,  as  an  aristocratic  confederation  in 
which  the  oligarchy  of  the  electors  should  hold  the  chief 
power,  died  within  a  few  years,  and,  just  as  the  partisan 
war  over  the  succession  to  George  the  Rich,  gave  a  field 


326  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

for  Maximilian's  best  qualities  as  a  soldier,  his  flashes  of 
energy,  his  skill  in  personal  fight,  his  reckless  daring,  his 
cunning,  so  the  situation  in  the  Empire  gave  a  chance  for 
his  talents  for  politics.  He  never  forgot  a  face,  if  he  had 
seen  it  only  once,  twenty  years  before,  at  a  Reichstag.1  He 
knew  how  to  put  the  most  awkward  at  their  ease ;  he  had 
great  self-control,  and,  even  when  the  veins  of  his  neck 
swelled  out  in  wrath,  he  bit  his  lip  and  kept  from  harsh 
words.  His  politeness  was  unfailing  even  to  opponents, 
and  few  who  came  to  court  with  complaints  could  resist 
the  charm  of  his  talk.  These  qualities  aided  him  in  a 
policy  thus  described  to  the  Senate  by  the  Venetian  Am- 
bassador.2 He  points  out  that  at  the  death  of  his  father, 
Maximilian  found  himself  with  little  credit  and  a  lack  of 
money,  little  feared  or  obeyed  by  the  princes  of  the  Em- 
pire. These,  under  the  lead  of  six,  were  so  strong  that  the 
Diet  never  voted  what  Maximilian  wanted, — "And  be- 
cause time  always  brings  occasion,  the  King,  seeing  he 
could  not  do  anything  he  wanted  because  of  the  resistance 
of  these  princes,  determined  to  advance  by  temporizing, 
and  commenced,  little  by  little,  every  time  a  prince-bishop 
of  the  Empire  died,  to  use  his  influence  in  support  of  the 
election  to  the  bishopric  of  some  trusted  friend  or  even  a 
relative  of  his  own.  And  he  did  this  not  only  with 
ecclesiastical  princes,  but  also  tried  always  to  favour  and 
flatter  the  eldest  sons  of  secular  princes,  so  that,  when  their 
fathers  died,  they  would  follow  his  wishes.  After  this, 
four  years  ago,  the  death  of  George  of  Bavaria  caused 

1  Friedrichs    des    Weisen    Leben    und    zeitgeschichte    nach    Spalatins    hand- 
schrift   herausgegeben.      Neudecker    und    Preller. 
•Alberi.     Series  I,  Vol.  VI,  page  32  ff. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  327 

the  war  between  Duke  Albert  of  Bavaria  and  the  Elector 
of  the  Pfalz  (Rupert's  father).  Maximilian  favoured 
Duke  Albert  his  brother-in-law,  and,  with  the  bishops  and 
princes  he  had  already  made  his  friends,  destroyed  the 
power  of  the  Elector  of  the  Pfalz.  About  the  time  of 
this  destruction  there  died  also  the  Archbishops  of  May- 
ence  and  of  Treves.  In  place  of  Treves  there  succeeded  a 
near  relative  of  the  King,  and  in  place  of  Mayence  an- 
other prelate,  not  at  all  like  his  predecessor  either  in  men- 
tal ability  or  in  power,  who  is  very  dependent  on  his  ma- 
jesty. Thus  little  by  little,  the  King  of  the  Romans,  hav- 
ing destroyed  the  Elector  of  the  Pfalz,  the  powerful 
princes  his  adversaries  being  dead,  and  the  friends  he  had 
raised  to  positions  of  power  having  increased,  has  grown 
so  influential  that  he  has  made  himself  almost  omnipotent 
among  the  princes  of  Germany,  to  such  an  extent  indeed 
that  there  is  not  one  who  is  anxious  to  oppose  him  in  any- 
thing. This  has  come  about  not  only  by  the  fear  inspired 
by  his  destruction  of  the  Elector  of  the  Pfalz,  but  also  by 
the  favour  which  the  young  princes  and  newly  elected 
bishops  show  him." 

In  other  words,  Maximilian  had,  by  the  beginning  of 
the  year  1507,  formed  a  party  from  which  he  could  expect 
support.  In  addition  his  son  Philip  had  died  in  Septem- 
ber, 1506,  and  the  regent  who  ruled  the  Netherlands  for 
Philip's  young  son  Charles,  was  Maximilian's  daughter 
Margaret;  an  able  woman  very  fond  of  her  father  and 
much  more  apt  to  take  his  advice  than  her  brother  Philip 
had  been.  Maximilian's  correspondence  with  her  shows 
that  he  often  directed  the  foreign  policy  of  her  govern- 
ment, and  constantly  used  the  patronage  of  the  Dutch  and 


328  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Flemish  states  to  reward  his  adherents  and  friends.1 
This  power,  based  on  prestige  and  personal  influence, 
Maximilian,  in  the  next  ten  years,  lost  entirely.  And  it  is 
difficult  to  avoid  the  impression  that  he  lost  it  because 
nothing  ever  seemed  to  him  important  compared  to  the 
glory  of  the  house  of  Hapsburg,  and  because  of  an  over- 
mastering itch  for  distinction  always  driving  him  to  play 
a  showy  part  in  affairs.  These  two  feelings,  continually 
tempting  him  out  of  the  path  leading  to  greatness,  were 
helped  by  palpable  blunders  in  his  chosen  games  of  war 
and  diplomacy,  where  he  thought  himself  supremely  skill- 
ful. For  no  one  can  read  the  Weiss  Kunig  without  see- 
ing that  Maximilian  thought  himself  a  very  great  ruler 
of  men,  a  soldier  comparable  to  Julius  Caesar,  a  complete 
master  of  state  craft. 

He  first  appealed  to  his  backing  among  the  members 
of  the  Reichstag  to  support  the  claims  of  the  house  of 
Hapsburg  to  the  crown  of  Hungary.  If  the  sickly  King 
Ladislas  died,  as  was  probable,  without  heirs,  Maximilian 
according  to  the  earlier  agreement  between  the  houses, 
was  to  succeed.  But  the  Hungarian  nobles  wanted  one 
of  their  own  number  for  ruler,  and  they  swore  an  oath  in 
case  of  a  failure  of  the  succession  to  elect  none  but  a  Hun- 
garian king.  The  assertion  of  a  national  right  against  a 
dynastic  right,  was  always  meaningless  to  Maximilian. 
Indeed  no  ruler  of  the  age  gave  any  true  response  to  that 
note.  War  in  defense  of  his  right  was  his  instinctive 
reply.  The  Reichstag  voted  the  troops  he  asked,  but 
Maximilian  succeeded  in  using  that  weapon  of  marriage 

*  Le  Glay,  Correspondance  de  1'Empereur  Maximilian  ler  et  de  Marguerite 
d'Autriche.  Paris,  1839,  passim. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  329 

which  brought  him  far  more  gain  than  arms.  The  daugh- 
ter of  Ladislas  was  pledged  to  marry  one  of  Maximilian's 
grandsons,  Carl  or  Ferdinand  and,  if  Ladislas  had  a  son, 
he  was  to  marry  Maximilian's  granddaughter  Mary. 
Maximilian  marched  an  army  to  the  border,  and  de- 
manded that  the  national  assembly  ratify  this  agreement 
which  secured  the  succession  to  the  crown  of  Ladislas  to 
the  Hapsburgs.  The  answer  was  a  summons  of  Hungary 
and  Bohemia  to  arms.  The  birth  of  a  son  to  Ladislas  in- 
terrupted the  fighting.  So  long  as  this  boy  lived,  the  con- 
tinuance of  a  Hungarian  government  seemed  assured. 
The  magnates,  therefore,  made  a  peace  which  neither  de- 
nied nor  acknowledged  the  Hapsburg  claims  (July,  1507). 

Maximilian  had  created  a  party,  it  now  remained  to  be 
seen  whether  he  could  manage  it.  The  plan  for  which 
he  asked  the  support  of  the  Reichstag  of  Constance  was 
one  which  appealed  to  every  German, — a  march  to  Rome 
to  receive  from  the  Pope  the  crown  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire  of  the  German  Nation. 

But  Maximilian  desired  no  mere  peaceful  possession. 
He  proposed  the  restoration  in  Italy  of  the  conditions  the 
Hohenstaufeus  had  perished  in  trying  to  maintain.  Milan 
must  be  recovered, — the  prestige  of  France  must  be 
broken  and  the  princes  of  Italy  taught  to  look  up  to  the 
eagle  instead  of  the  lilies, — French  control  of  the  papacy 
must  be  destroyed,  lest,  at  the  next  vacancy,  French  car- 
dinals should  choose  a  French  pope  who  would  crown 
Louis  XII  Emperor  to  the  dishonour  of  Germany.  For 
these  ends  he  asked  thirty  thousand  men.  The  Reich- 
stag voted  fifteen  thousand,  and  Maximilian  assured  them 
he  would  withdraw  his  attention  altogether  from  small 


330  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

affairs  to  turn  all  his  energies  toward  large  enterprises: 
by  which  he  meant  that  he  would  leave  to  others  the 
bringing  of  Germany  to  order  and  devote  himself  to  driv- 
ing the  French  from  Italy  and  leading  the  world  against 
Constantinople. 

For  the  present,  several  small  obstacles  embarrassed  his 
progress  toward  a  triumphal  entry  into  Constantinople. 
The  Swiss,  whose  mercenary  troops  both  Louis  and  Max- 
imilian wanted  to  use  and  whose  influential  men  both 
bribed  as  heavily  as  they  could  afford,  finally  voted  not  to 
allow  their  troops  to  be  used  against  France,  though  they 
agreed  that  six  thousand  men  might  follow  the  imperial 
banner  in  an  expedition  to  receive  the  crown  at  Rome. 
In  the  second  place,  Venice  had  refused  to  permit  the 
Emperor  to  cross  her  territories  on  his  way  to  Rome, 
unless  he  came  without  an  army.  It  was  difficult  to  see 
how  he  could  get  into  Italy  without  the  consent  of  the 
Swiss,  the  French  who  held  Lombardy,  or  the  Venetians. 
In  the  third  place,  the  support  promised  by  the  Reichstag 
had  not  materialized.  By  February,  1508,  less  than  one 
thousand  men  out  of  the  fifteen  thousand  were  with  the 
colours,  and  only  a  quarter  of  the  subsidy  had  been  paid, 
while  the  contributions  promised  by  some  of  the  Italian 
cities  were  still  on  paper. 

Maximilian  could  not  get  through  the  Alpine  passes. 
It  was  very  doubtful  whether  he  could  cross  Italy  to  Rome. 
He  determined  therefore  to  take  the  title  without  the 
crown,  and,  after  a  ceremony  in  the  cathedral  of  Trent, 
announced  in  proclamations  that  he  was  henceforth  to  be 
called  "Elected  Roman  Emperor,"  instead  of  "King  of 
the  Romans."  The  Pope  solemnly  approved  the  act. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  331 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  is  hard  to  imagine  what 
motives  worthy  of  a  statesman's  consideration,  could  have 
induced  Maximilian  to  make  war  on  Venice.  Her  trade 
increased  the  riches  of  German  cities,  and  his  own  duchy 
of  Tirol  suffered  especially  from  an  interruption  of  com- 
merce. It  is  difficult  to  find  any  reason  but  revenge  and 
pride  for  leading  his  men  down  the  Alpine  valleys  in  an 
attack  on  Venice.  He  did  not  stay  with  them  long  but 
went  back  to  Tirol  to  look  after  the  finances.  His  gen- 
erals met  little  but  disaster.  Fifteen  hundred  men  were 
cut  off  and  utterly  destroyed  near  Pieve  di  Cadore.  The 
Venetians  took  town  after  town  around  the  northern 
shores  of  the  Adriatic.  The  peasants  and  burghers  were 
everywhere  faithful  to  the  Venetian  masters  who  gave 
them  better  government  and  lower  taxes  than  they  had 
known  under  other  rulers.  The  jealous  imperial  leaders, 
without  any  central  control,  scattered  their  strength.  They 
could  not  save  Trieste,  which  fell  May,  1508.  In  vain  did 
the  Emperor  call  upon  the  German  princes  for  further 
aid.  Unable  to  properly  defend  his  southeastern  duchies 
against  Venetian  raids,  he  made  a  truce  of  three  years  with 
the  Signory,  on  a  basis  which  brought  such  loss  of  Aus- 
trian possessions,  that  Maximilian's  faithful  soldier,  Eric 
of  Brunswick,  when  he  read  the  treaty,  spat  on  it  and 
trampled  it  under  foot. 

Maximilian's  desire  for  revenge,  increased  by  the  hu- 
miliating treaty,  was  only  deferred.  To  accomplish  it  he 
became  the  close  ally  of  the  monarch  against  whom  he 
had  repeatedly  demanded  from  the  Reichstag  war  to  the 
knife.  There  is  some  reason  to  believe  that  Maximilian 
was  more  responsible  than  anyone  else  for  the  League 


332  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

of  Cambray,  which,  in  the  end  of  December,  1508,  united 
the  Pope,  France,  Aragon  and  the  Emperor  against 
Venice.  The  war  was  to  continue  until  she  was  stripped 
of  all  the  conquests  on  the  mainland  she  ruled  so  well. 
This  booty  was  to  be  divided  among  the  allies.  England, 
Hungary  and  the  Italian  states  were  to  be  invited  to  join. 
The  Pope  was  to  release  Maximilian  from  his  oath  to  ob- 
serve a  truce  with  Venice  for  three  years,  and  summon 
him  as  the  protector  of  the  Church  to  attack  her. 

Venice  was  the  only  state  in  Italy  strong  enough  to 
make  head  against  France.  Whatever  quarrels  might 
arise  with  the  Empire,  self  interest  would  in  the  long  run 
make  the  Republic  an  ally  of  Maximilian  if  France  tried 
to  do  what  he  said  he  feared  she  was  planning.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  find  an  instance  where  a  childish  desire  for  re- 
venge, for  glory  or  for  new  lands  and  cities  to  call  his 
own,  has  betrayed  a  ruler  into  a  blunder  in  state  craft 
more  palpable  than  this  activity  of  Maximilian  in  marshal- 
ing Europe  for  the  destruction  of  Venice.  His  fancy  led 
him  into  dreaming  of  the  world  as  it  had  been,  and  he 
saw  himself  managing  north  Italy  like  another  Frederick 
II.  His  imagination,  always  his  master  instead  of  his 
servant,  was  too  weak  to  deal  with  facts,  and  his  lack  of 
knowledge  of  men  made  him  constantly  assume  that  allies 
as  ambitious  and  crafty  as  himself,  could  be  moved  like 
pawns  on  a  chess  board  wherever  he  wished  them  to  go. 

The  Reichstag,  when  it  met  at  Worms  in  the  Spring  of 
1509,  was  not  much  interested  in  sending  the  men  and 
money  the  Emperor  asked  to  support  this  great  scheme. 
They  dissolved  without  any  action.  The  Assemblies  of 
Maximilian's  personal  duchies,  the  Austrian  lands,  also 


MAXIMILIAN  I  333 

showed  the  greatest  reluctance  to  attack  Venice.  It  was 
only  by  granting  new  privileges  that  Maximilian  could 
obtain  a  vote  of  half  the  supply  he  demanded.  Nothing 
was  left  for  him  but  to  raise  funds  by  mortgaging  to  the 
great  Augsburg  bankers,  the  Fuggers,  almost  everything 
as  yet  unmortgaged  upon  which  they  would  lend.  All 
this  took  time,  and  when  the  battle  of  Aquadello  laid  the 
Republic  helpless  before  the  allies,  Maximilian  was  not 
on  hand  to  get  his  share  of  the  plunder.  Aragon,  France 
and  the  Pope  seized  the  lands  they  wanted,  but  the  ban- 
ner of  Maximilian  was  still  on  the  other  side  of  the  Alps. 
When  Verona  Vicenza,  Padua  and  the  towns  about  the 
northern  end  of  the  Adriatic,  bending  before  the  storm, 
raised  the  imperial  colours,  no  proper  garrisons  were  at 
hand  to  man  them.  The  Venetians  were  therefore  able  to 
surprise  Padua,  and  make  it  a  rallying  point  for  their 
army  broken  at  Aquadello. 

It  was  the  middle  of  August  before  Maximilian  could 
invest  the  city  so  carelessly  lost.  His  army,  made  up  of 
four  thousand  French,  a  thousand  Spaniards,  a  force  of 
Burgundians,  a  small  troop  of  Papal  mercenaries  and 
contingents  from  Italian  princes,  was  about  twenty  thou- 
sand strong;  a  force  which  seemed  to  his  contemporaries 
to  insure  success.  While  he  waited  for  his  siege  guns, 
the  Emperor  took  neighbouring  towns,  established  his 
lines  and  collected  provisions.  His  great  cannon  soon 
made  a  breach.  But  the  troops  which  mounted  to  the 
assault  were  slaughtered  by  mines  and  the  storm  failed. 
A  second  attack  ten  days  later  met  no  better  fate.  Never- 
theless, the  chance  to  reduce  the  city  was  still  good.  The 
provisions  and  ammunition  of  the  garrison  were  running 


334  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

low.  The  full  strength  of  the  besiegers  had  not  been  ex- 
erted. Then,  if  ever,  was  the  time  to  set  all  on  the  hazard 
and  play  the  game  of  glory  to  the  end.  Maximilian's 
reputation  never  recovered  from  the  fact  that,  early  in  Oc- 
tober, he  abandoned  the  attempt  to  take  the  city  and  soon 
after  returned  to  Tirol.  The  army,  which  was  only  held 
together  by  his  presence,  at  once  broke  up,  leaving  the 
besieged  astonished  at  their  sudden  release  from  mortal 
danger.  As  a  result,  the  Venetians,  with  the  favour  of  the 
inhabitants,  recovered,  before  Winter,  most  of  the 
fortresses  they  had  lost. 

Maximilian  turned  in  every  direction  to  find  means  to 
set  on  foot  another  army  at  whose  head  he  could  appear 
in  Italy.  The  Reichstag  would  not  give  it  to  him.  In 
vain  he  begged  the  King  of  France  to  lend  him  an  army 
or  the  means  to  raise  one,  taking  as  security  the  conquests 
he  was  to  make  in  Italy;  and  in  the  midst  of  his  efforts 
the  cumbrous  league  of  Cambray  suddenly  began  to  go 
to  pieces. 

Pope  Julius  II  was  wiser  than  the  Emperor.  He  had 
recovered  from  Venice  the  vassals  the  Signory  had  taken 
from  the  Church,  and  had  no  wish  to  lay  Italy  at  the  feet 
of  the  French  King  by  the  destruction  of  her  strongest 
state.  He  suddenly  announced  himself  an  ally  of  the  Sig- 
nory to  drive  the  French  barbarians  from  Italy  (May, 
1510).  He  gained  the  support  of  Spain  and  the  Swiss, 
and  would  have  preferred  to  add  Maximilian  to  his  allies. 
He  made,  therefore,  an  effort  to  bring  about  peace  between 
the  Emperor  and  Venice ;  but  Maximilian  would  make  no 
concession  that  the  Republic  would  accept.  He  acted  as  if 
he  had  so  far  won  instead  of  lost  in  the  war,  demanding 


MAXIMILIAN  I  335 

not  only  the  towns  Venice  had  taken,  but  also  the  chief 
cities  of  their  possessions  on  the  mainland.  Venice  was 
not  disposed  to  lose  the  fruits  of  victory,  and  Maximilian 
stood  by  the  alliance  with  Louis  XII. 

It  is  difficult  to  avoid  the  impression  that  this  would 
have  been  an  excellent  opportunity  to  withdraw  at  any 
cost  from  what  events  had  plainly  shown  must  be  a  losing 
game.  Maximilian  was  constantly  changing  his  plans. 
An  aptness  to  drop  a  half  finished  design  and  take  up  a 
new  one,  has  been  noted  by  all  moderns  who  have  written 
on  any  episode  of  his  career.  This  lack  of  steadiness 
was,  by  this  time,  a  commonplace  among  contemporary 
statesmen  who  knew  him.  Quirini  thus  describes  this 
prominent  trait  to  the  Venetian  Senate  in  i^o?:1  "He 
has  a  good  intelligence,  and  one  so  alert  that  he  is  cleverer 
than  any  of  his  councilors  in  finding  many  expedients  for 
every  need.  But  he  has  one  defect,  that,  however  many 
expedients  he  may  discover,  he  does  not  know  how  to 
carry  out  any  of  them,  and  so  he  is  as  lacking  in  power 
of  execution  as  he  is  abundant  in  power  of  invention. 
And  although,  out  of  two  or  three  remedies  for  an  evil 
which  may  have  suggested  themselves  to  his  mind,  he  has 
chosen  one  as  the  best,  nevertheless  he  does  not  execute 
his  design,  because,  suddenly,  before  he  can  execute  it, 
some  other  design  takes  shape  in  his  mind  which  he 
thinks  better,  and  thus  he  is  so  eager  to  change  from  a  bet- 
ter thing  to  a  better  thing  that  time  and  occasion  pass  for 
doing  anything."  But  ready  as  Maximilian  was  to  change 
his  own  plans,  he  was  very  unready  to  have  them  changed 
for  him.  Other  contemporaries  confirm  Machiavelli's  ob- 

1Rclazioni,  etc.     Scrie  I,  Vol.  VI,  page  27. 


336  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

servation  that  he  never  really  consulted  his  councilors  or 
acted  on  anybody's  advice.  Besides,  like  many  men,  usu- 
ally good  natured  and  slow  to  take  offence,  Maximilian 
had  a  temper  exceedingly  tenacious  of  a  dislike  once 
aroused.  The  offence  the  Venetians  had  given  in  1507 
by  refusing  passage  for  his  army  in  a  march  to  be  crowned 
at  Rome,  overlaid  in  his  mind  the  earlier  hatred  of  Louis 
XII.  He  would  not  therefore  change  his  attitude  to  the 
Republic. 

It  is  easy  of  course  to  be  unjust  in  judging  Maximilian's 
attitude  toward  Italian  affairs,  and  to  blame  him  for  not 
seeing  what  events  made  plain  after  his  death.  The  forci- 
ble union  of  Italy  and  Germany  in  the  Empire,  was  a  curse 
to  both  peoples,  and  the  full  price  they  paid  was  the  delay 
of  national  unity  until  1 870.  But  of  all  the  rulers  of  Europe, 
only  the  Tudors,  and  they  half  unconsciously,  had  become 
aware  that  the  strength  of  a  dynasty  lay  in  a  national 
rather  than  in  imperial  policy.  The  wisdom  not  to  join 
5n  the  fight  for  the  control  of  Italy,  was,  perhaps,  too  much 
to  expect  of  any  man  in  Maximilian's  position.  One  of 
his  titles  was  "at  all  times  increaser  of  the  Empire."  In 
the  oath  of  office  he  swore  to  defend  its  bounds.  And 
as  a  knight  it  seemed  impossible  to  him  to  refuse  to  re- 
sent an  insult  in  arms.  All  his  councilors,  all  his  son's 
councilors  and  all  the  princes  of  the  Empire,  were,  it  is 
true,  against  his  first  descent  into  Italy.  But  he  had  rea- 
son to  suspect  the  motives  of  many  of  these  advisers,  and 
the  impulse  to  gratify  his  ambition  and  his  love  of  action, 
might  rather  easily  assume  in  his  own  consciousness  the 
form  of  a  sense  of  duty.  The  humanists,  whose  company 
delighted  him,  who  were  his  great  admirers,  were  con- 


MAXIMILIAN  I  337 

stantly  strengthening  him  in  this  delusion.  Their  utter- 
ances made  it  easier  for  Maximilian  to  live  in  a  world  of 
ideals  long  outworn,  and  to  neglect  the  facts  of  the  actual 
world.  The  critical  methods  of  the  New  Learning  of  the 
Renascence,  did  not  lead  the  early  German  humanists  to 
a  correct  understanding  of  the  genesis,  or  the  nature,  of 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire  of  the  German  Nation.  They  clung 
to  the  delusion  of  the  fifteenth  century  jurists,  and  thought 
it  to  be  a  direct  successor  of  the  Empire  of  Trajan.  They 
transferred  ideas  from  one  to  the  other,  in  a  way  most  mis- 
leading to  any  Emperor  who  read  their  writings  or  lis- 
tened to  their  appeals.  Worse  political  advisers  than 
these  men,  who  thought  they  had  found  in  old  books  wis- 
dom to  direct  a  new  world,  could  hardly  be  imagined. 
Their  fundamentally  wrong  conceptions  of  the  duty  of  an 
Emperor  played  into  all  Maximilian's  weaknesses.  The 
writings  of  Brant,  Wimpheling,  Celtes,  Hutten,  strength- 
ened in  him  the  erroneous  ideas  which  carried  him  down 
into  Lombardy  in  spite  of  all  difficulties  and  against  all 
protests,  in  order  that  he  might  display  to  an  admiring 
world  of  which  he  was  the  rightful  head,  the  combined 
virtues  of  his  two  namesakes,  Fabius  Maximus  and 
^Emilius  Paulus,  and  outdo  the  deeds  of  Julius  Caesar.1 

But  there  was  no  reason  why  Maximilian  should  not 
have  abandoned  a  position  events  had  shown  untenable, 
or  given  up  a  method  of  establishing  his  claims  which 
common  sense  ought  to  have  told  him  would  lead  to  dis- 
aster. He  had  nothing  to  gain  and  much  to  lose  by  de- 

1  In  one  of  his  memorandum  books  is  this  entry  (1501-1505):  "In  this 
affair  his  Majesty  gave  eight  secretaries  enough  to  write  in  order  that  his 
Majesty  might  outdo  Julius  Caesar."  Jahrbucher  Kunsthistorischen  Samm- 
lungen,  VI,  page  9. 


338  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

stroying  Venice.  No  one  paid  any  attention  to  the  com- 
mands of  an  Emperor  without  an  army.  Germany  would 
not  give  him  an  army.  His  attempts  to  raise  one  had 
completed  the  ruin  of  his  finances,  and  cost  him  dan- 
gerous concessions  in  every  contest  to  maintain  his  au- 
thority or  claims  within  the  Empire  or  on  its  borders. 
What  reason  was  there  to  suppose  that  the  King  of 
France,  whom  he  had  repeatedly  denounced  as  his  dead- 
ly enemy  and  unscrupulous  rival,  would  do  anything 
for  the  German  Empire  in  Italy?  It  was  most  fatuous 
for  him  to  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  warnings  of  his  clever, 
faithful  daughter,  Margaret,  regent  of  the  Netherlands 
for  her  young  nephew,  that  Louis  XII  in  advising  him 
to  continue  the  war  with  Venice  was  using  him  as  a 
catspaw.  The  chief  cause  of  his  making  such  a  mistake, 
was  his  instinctive  disinclination  to  a  policy  of  slow  con- 
struction, and  his  longing  for  a  course  of  adventurous 
action,  preferably  one  which  would  make  him  the  centre 
about  which  all  events  turned. 

This  seems  to  have  been  the  reason  for  the  most  extra- 
ordinary of  all  his  plans,  the  plan  he  attempted  to  put  in 
execution  in  August,  1511.  When  Julius  II  was  reported 
to  be  dying,  Maximilian  wrote  letters,  the  face  value  of 
which  is  that  he  hoped  to  take  vows  of  celibacy,  lay  down 
the  imperial  insignia  and  be  crowned  Pope.  This  is  an 
idea  so  wild,  that  many  of  the  more  recent  writers  have 
insisted  that  it  is  possible  to  read  all  the  phrases  in  an 
allegorical  or  jesting  sense,  which,  they  are  inclined  to  be- 
lieve, covered  a  plan  to  elect  Cardinal  Hadrian  of  Corneto, 
Vicar  of  Christ,  while  Maximilian  received  from  him  in 
return  the  temporal  rule  of  the  States  of  the  Church.  By 


MAXIMILIAN  I  339 

ingenious  argument,  Maximilian's  phrases  can  be  made  to 
fit  the  hypothesis ;  but  the  difficulty  which  suggested  it,  is 
not  removed  by  its  establishment.  If  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  Maximilian  cherished  for  a  moment  the  idea 
that  he  could  be  elected  Pope ;  it  is  scarcely  less  difficult  to 
believe  that  he  could  have  thought  it  possible  for  him  to 
separate  the  spiritual  and  temporal  power  of  the  papacy. 
Nothing  but  the  force  of  arms  could  have  made  such  a 
revolution.  How  could  an  Emperor  unable  to  defend 
against  Venice  the  small  towns  at  the  head  of  the  Adriatic, 
hope  to  take  Rome  and  rule  the  Papal  States  ? *  What- 
ever the  plan  was,  the  unexpected  recovery  of  Julius  made 
it  superfluous. 

It  was  really  a  year  later,  before  Maximilian  permitted 
the  Pope  to  arrange  a  ten  months'  truce  with  Venice 
which  left  him  between  France  and  the  Holy 
League,  sought  by  both  and  committed  to  neither. 
Within  a  week  of  the  truce,  the  French  army 
routed  the  army  of  the  League  in  the  slaughterous 
battle  of  Ravenna  and  seemed  master  of  Italy.  This  spec- 
tacle was  too  much  for  Maximilian ;  he  opened  the  passes 
of  Tirol  for  the  Swiss  that  they  might  march  to  the  de- 
fense of  the  Pope,  he  ordered  all  the  German  mercenaries 
who  had  done  so  much  to  win  the  battle  of  Ravenna  to 
leave  the  lilies.  The  result  was  the  retreat  of  the  French 
across  the  Alps.  But  in  spite  of  this  attack  upon  Louis 
XII,  Maximilian  still  continued  negotiations  for  the  com- 

1  For  this  discussion  references  to  literature  Gebhardt  Die  Gravamina  der 
deutschen  nation  gegen  den  Romischen  Hof.  Breslau,  1884,  page  90. 

Ulmann,   Maximilian   I,   Vol.   II,   page   439. 

Jager  Albrecht.  Maximilian's  verhaltnisse  zum  Papsthum  in  Sitzungsbe- 
richte  der  Kais.  Akad.  d.  Wissenschaften.  Phil.  Hist.  Klasse,  Vol.  XII,  210. 


340  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

pletion  of  the  marriage  between  Louis's  daughter  and  his 
own  grandson  Charles.  The  negotiations  made  the  Pope 
uncertain  of  his  support  and  anxious  to  persuade  Venice 
to  grant  Maximilian's  condition  for  a  peace.  Julius  even 
went  so  far,  as  to  threaten  Venice  with  the  interdict  and 
an  attack  by  papal  troops  under  the  command  of  Max- 
imilian. Then  Maximilian,  having  exacted  the  price  of 
his  adhesion,  joined  the  Holy  League.  This  was  politics 
which  seemed  to  promise  the  object  he  desired,  the  de- 
struction of  Venice.  He  forgot  that  the  Venetians  were 
not  going  to  be  idle  while  their  destruction  was  carried 
out. 

In  March,  1513,  they  formed  an  alliance  with  their  for- 
mer deadly  enemy,  France.  Maximilian's  answer  was  a 
league  with  England,  Spain  and  the  new  Pope,  Leo  X,  to 
attack  France  and  divide  her  territories,  as  the  members 
of  the  League  of  Cambray  had  promised  to  divide  the 
territories  of  Venice. 

Once  more  the  god  of  war,  so  long  unfriendly,  seemed 
to  smile  on  him.  The  Swiss  marched  to  defend  the  young 
Duke  Maximilian  Sforza,  son  of  Ludovico,  who  had 
died  a  prisoner  in  France.  At  Novara,  June  6th,  1513, 
they  routed  the  French  army,  which  retreated  across  the 
Alps.  In  northern  France,  the  English  army  of  invasion, 
which  Maximilian  joined  without  troops,  to  fight  by  the 
side  of  his  ally,  Henry  VIII,  won,  largely  by  Maximilian's 
advice,  the  Battle  of  the  Spurs  (August  i6th,  1513),  a 
rout  which  temporarily  demoralized  the  French  army. 
In  September  the  Swiss  marched  into  Burgundy  and  in- 
vested Dijon,  the  capital,  weakly  garrisoned  and  unable 
to  stand  a  strong  attack.  In  October  the  imperial  army 


MAXIMILIAN  I  341 

made  up  of  Spaniards  and  Germans  totally  defeated  the 
Venetians  near  Vicenza,  inflicting  a  loss  of  all  their  stan- 
dards and  artillery,  together  with  five  thousand  men  and 
the  majority  of  their  officers.  But  none  of  these  victories 
were  pushed  home,  and  France  gained  time  to  prepare  a 
strong  defence. 

The  pieces  were  then  moved  on  the  board  of  diplomacy 
with  bewildering  rapidity.  In  order  to  make  sure  of  the 
support  of  Henry  of  England  for  attacking  France  again 
in  the  spring  of  1514,  Maximilian  promised  to  make 
Henry  King  of  France  and  to  appoint  him  Vicar  and  suc- 
cessor to  the  Empire.  The  alliance  was  to  be  sealed  by 
the  marriage  of  Henry's  sister  Mary,  to  Maximilian's 
grandson  Charles. 

The  losses  of  the  past  campaign  and  the  threat  of  con- 
tinued attack,  made  the  French  King  renew  in  the  most 
flattering  form  the  offer  of  a  marriage  between  his  daugh- 
ter and  Maximilian's  grandson  Ferdinand.  He  now 
promised  the  Duchy  of  Milan  as  a  dowry.  Tempted  by 
the  offer,  Maximilian  joined  Ferdinand's  maternal 
grandfather,  Ferdinand  of  Spain,  in  a  year's  truce  with 
France  with  this  marriage  in  prospect.  Thereupon  the 
King  of  England,  suspecting  that  he  was  deserted  and  be- 
trayed by  both  his  allies,  broke  the  engagement  of  his  sis- 
ter Mary  to  Charles,  married  her  to  Louis  XII,  and  made 
a  close  offensive  and  defensive  league  with  France  in  Oc- 
tober, 1514. 

Louis,  relieved  from  danger,  broke  the  engagement  of 
his  daughter  Renata  to  Ferdinand,  and  prepared  to  cross 
the  Alps  and  reassert  his  mastery  over  north  Italy.  The 


342  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

country  to  which  he  took  his  journey  was  farther,  for  on 
the  first  of  January,  1515,  he  died. 

His  successor,  the  youthful  Francis  I,  enlarged  and  car- 
ried out  his  plan.  In  August  he  came  down  into  Italy, 
and  the  next  month,  with  the  help  of  the  Venetians,  de- 
feated the  Swiss  at  Marignano  in  the  greatest  battle  of  the 
generation.  Milan  surrendered  and  the  Duke,  Max- 
imilian Sforza,  was  sent  to  France  a  prisoner. 
Once  more  the  pieces  shifted  on  the  diplomatic  board 
where  the  armies  for  these  brutal  wars  of  treacherous  and 
selfish  princes  were  arrayed.  Spain,  England  and  Max- 
imilian, fearing  the  overwhelming  influence  of  France, 
joined  another  league  against  her.  In  the  Spring  of  1516, 
Maximilian  appeared  once  more  in  Italy  at  the  head  of  a 
force  of  Spaniards,  Germans  and  Swiss  paid  for  by  Eng- 
lish gold,  and,  towards  the  end  of  March,  threatened  an 
assault  on  Milan,  whither  the  French  army  had  retired. 
The  English  commissioners,  the  Swiss,  German  and  Span- 
ish captains,  advised  a  fight,  but  suddenly,  Maximilian,  as 
at  Padua  seven  years  before,  refused  a  decisive  action  and 
announced  his  intention  of  leaving  the  army.  The  Car- 
dinal of  Zion  who  had  brought  the  Swiss  into  action,  and 
Pace,  the  English  agent,  combatted  this  intention  with 
all  their  power,  and  Maximilian's  councilors  told  him  that 
if  he  withdrew,  "no  man  in  Germany  would  esteem  him 
the  worth  of  a  groat."1  To  the  despair  of  all  around  him 
he  persisted  in  abandoning  the  attack,  although  the  Swiss 
sent  word  "desiring  him,  if  he  was  afraid,  to  put  himself 
in  security  in  Brescia ;  and  they,  with  his  horsemen,  would 
clear  the  French  out  of  Italy." 

*  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  Vol.  II,  number  1721. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  343 

The  Emperor  might  have  given  some  good  reasons  for 
his  caution.  The  French  army  was  strong  and  behind 
walls,  the  Swiss  under  his  command  were  mutinous  be- 
cause their  pay  was  delayed,  and  the  Spaniards  rivalled 
their  insubordination.  Such  an  army  was,  however, 
most  easily  controlled  when  it  was  fighting,  and  the 
plunder  of  Milan  would  have  kept  the  soldiers  with  the 
standards.  The  Emperor  afterwards  said,  he  feared  they 
would  sack  the  city,  and  he  wished  to  conquer  Italy  by 
kindness,  not  by  fear.  He  had  not  shrunk  from  such  vio- 
lence before.  He  wasted  Flanders  with  fire  and  sword  to 
force  the  submission  of  Ghent.  He  sent  word  to  the  King 
of  Spain  that  he  intended  to  compel  Florence  to  abandon 
the  alliance  of  France,  by  devastating  "all  the  villages, 
houses,  gardens  and  vineyards  outside  of  the  city,  and  also 
all  the  country  in  the  neighborhood  belonging  to  the  Flor- 
entines."1 The  truth  probably  was,  that  fear  of  betrayal 
by  the  Swiss — the  idea  that  they  would  sell  him  to  his 
enemies  as  other  Swiss  had  sold  Ludovico  Sforza  to 
France,  sixteen  years  before — was  the  chief  motive  for 
his  sudden  preference  for  prudence  over  boldness.  This 
fear  was  not  very  well  based,  for  there  was  a  marked  dif- 
ference between  the  two  situations.  In  1500,  the  Swiss 
were  fighting  against  their  cantonal  standards.  In  1516 
they  were  with  them.  When  the  Swiss  who  fought  with 
France  sent  messengers  to  Maximilian's  Swiss  captains  a 
few  days  after  the  withdrawal,  the  imperial  captains  in- 
dignantly repudiated  the  invitation  to  betray  their  leader, 
reproached  the  French  mercenaries  and  professed  their 

1  Chmel  Urkunden,  page  128. 


344  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

loyalty  to  Maximilian.1  The  Emperor's  distrust  of  the 
Swiss  was  increased  by  two  things.  A  letter  proposing 
betrayal,  intended  to  fall  into  his  hands,  was  sent  from  the 
French  camp,  and  the  night  after  he  read  it,  he  saw  in  a 
dream  his  ancestors  who  had  been  defeated  by  the  Swiss 
at  Morgarten  and  Sempach.  They  warned  him  not  to 
trust  the  hereditary  foes  of  his  house.2 

Whether  his  reasons  were  good  or  bad,  the  world  could 
see  no  good  reasons  why  this  man,  usually  so  rash,  should 
suddenly  prefer  caution  to  action.  His  friends  were 
"greatly  dispirited."  In  France  it  was  thought  that  the 
King  of  the  Romans  had  shamefully  withdrawn.3  The 
Venetian  envoy  wrote  the  Senate, —  "The  Emperor  has 
gone  back  and  to  his  great  shame  crossed  the  Adda."  4 

Spinelli  wrote  to  Henry  VIII, — "If  the  Emperor  do 
not  shortly  return  (to  his  army)  his  reputation  is 
ruined."5  Henry  VIII  exhorted  him,  "like  a  valiant  captain, 
to  resume  his  heart  and  put  a  stop  to  the  dishonourable 
reports  circulated  about  him."  6  And  when  Maximilian 
persisted  in  not  trusting  himself  in  the  field  at  the  head 
of  his  men,  Pace  finally  wrote  from  Italy  to  Wolsey, — 
"The  Emperor  is  so  degraded  it  signifies  not  whether  he 
is  friend  or  enemy."  7  His  own  German  landsknechts, 
mutinous  for  lack  of  pay,  refused  his  orders  to  assault 
a  Venetian  castle  on  the  Lago  d'Idro  and  called  him 
"Apple  King  and  Straw  King."  The  imperial  army  went 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  Vol.  II,  number  1737. 

8  Ilistoria  und  wahrhafftige  beschreibung  von  Herr  Georgen  von  Frundsberg, 
etc.     Kriegsthaten,  Frankfort,  1568,  page  24.     Confirmed  also  by  Italian  writers. 
•Letters  and  Papers,  Vol.  II,  2017. 
«  Letters  and  Papers,  Vol.  II,  1841. 
•Letters  and  Papers,  Vol.  II,  1763. 
•  Letters  and  Papers,  Vol.  II,  1753. 
»  Letters  and  Papers,  Vol.  II,  1877. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  345 

to  pieces,  and  the  French  swept  everything  before  them  in 
north  Italy. 

From  this  time  on,  Maximilian  hardly  counted  in  Ital- 
ian affairs.  His  grandson  Charles,  now  King  of  Spain  and 
Naples,  advised  him  to  save  danger  to  his  person  by  ap- 
pointing a  general  captain  of  experience,  and  England 
leagued  with  the  Swiss  to  re-take  Milan,  leaving  out  Max- 
imilian altogether. 

In  August,  Charles  and  Francis  made  the  treaty  of 
Noyon  without  Maximilian's  advice  and  against  his  will. 
Nothing  remained  for  the  Emperor  but  to  ratify  it  in  De- 
cember, 1516.  It  brought  his  nine  years'  war  with  Venice 
to  a  close  which  could  have  given  him  little  pleasure.  His 
effort  to  re-establish  the  power  of  the  Empire  south  of  the 
Alps,  had  added  a  small  strip  to  his  duchy  of  Tirol,  and 
had  left  him  a  huge  debt  for  which  everything  he  owned 
was  mortgaged.1  The  Venetians  or  the  French  were  in 
possession  of  almost  all  he  had  claimed  in  north  Italy.  It 
is  doubtful  whether  the  Emperor,  isolated  and  helpless  as 
he  was,  would  have  agreed  to  such  an  arrangement  if  he 
had  thought  it  permanent.  He  still  trusted  in  the  chances 
of  the  future  and  his  own  diplomacy. 

In  the  Spring  of  1517,  another  agreement  was  made 
between  Francis,  Charles  and  the  Emperor.  Secret  arti- 
cles promised  the  erecting  of  two  new  fiefs  of  the  Em- 
pire. Maximilian  was  to  create  at  once  the  kingdom  of 
Lombardy  for  Francis,  and  the  Kingdom  of  Italy,  com- 
posed for  Ferdinand,  Maximilian's  younger  grandson,  out 
of  Venice,  Tuscany  and  other  middle  Italian  states.  Per- 

1  Maximilian  to  the  Estates  of  Tirol,  January,  1518. 

Archiv  fur  Kunde  Oesterreichischer  Geschichte  quellen.     1854,  page  219. 


346  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

haps  neither  Valois  nor  Hapsburg  really  expected  to  carry 
out  this  agreement.  At  all  events,  the  influence  of  the 
Empire  counted  for  nothing  in  Italy,  until,  five  years  later, 
Maximilian's  grandson,  under  the  title  of  Emperor,  but 
using  his  resources  as  King  of  Spain,  successfully  renewed 
the  struggle  against  the  overmastering  Valois. 

The  war  against  Venice  thus  ended  in  com- 
plete disaster.  But  in  the  east  Maximilian  had 
meantime  met  with  a  great  success.  A  lasting 
agreement  brought  a  final  settlement  to  the  ques- 
tion of  the  Hungarian  and  Bohemian  crowns.  In 
the  spring  of  1515,  Maximilian  met  the  King  of  Hun- 
gary and  Bohemia  and  the  King  of  Poland  at  Vienna. 
Maximilian  was  exceedingly  proud  of  his  ability  at  ar- 
ranging banquets  and  masques,  and  has  recorded  it  by 
pen  and  burin  in  the  works  which  he  designed  to  hand 
down  his  fame  and  posterity.  He  exerted  his  skill,  and 
amid  a  magnificent  series  of  entertainments  which  must 
have  strained  to  the  utmost  his  exhausted  resources,  these 
rulers  reached  an  agreement  very  favourable  to  the  house 
of  Hapsburg.  Louis,  the  Crown  Prince  of  Hungary,  was 
married  by  proxy  to  Maximilian's  granddaughter  Mary. 
His  sister  Anna  was  married  to  Maximilian  himself,  with 
the  understanding  that  his  younger  grandson,  Ferdinand, 
might,  within  a  year,  be  substituted  as  titular  husband. 
Maximilian  adopted  Louis,  named  him  imperial  Vicar, 
and  issued  a  call  to  the  Electors  to  choose  him  for  the  next 
Emperor.  This  was  the  same  promise  Maximilian  had 
given  to  Henry  VIII.  Henry  VIII  apparently  took  it 
seriously ;  Louis  may  perhaps  have  done  so,  but  it  is  cer- 


MAXIMILIAN  I  347 

tain  that  Maximilian  never  did.  Six  years  later  Ferdi- 
nand and  Anna  began  their  married  life,  and  when  King 
Louis,  in  1526,  lost  his  army  and  his  life  before  the  Turks 
at  Mohacz,  Ferdinand  was  able,  after  a  civil  war  and 
much  bribery,  to  secure  the  crowns  of  Bohemia-  and  Hun- 
gary. Thus,  east  and  west,  the  hopes  of  Maximilian  for 
the  power  of  his  descendants,  were  successful.  He  could 
not  reconquer  Italy,  but  he  did  spread  the  lands  of  the 
Hapsburgs  in  almost  unbroken  line  from  the  Carpathian 
mountains  to  the  North  Sea. 

Far  otherwise  was  it  with  his  attempted  reform  of  the 
Empire.  When  he  called  on  various  Reichstags  to  sup- 
port him  in  maintaining  the  imperial  influence  south  of 
the  Alps  against  Venice  and  France,  he  had  not  entirely 
neglected  the  crying  need  of  Germany  for  justice  and 
peace.  The  reforms  of  Worms  in  1495  proved  entirely 
ineffective.  Twelve  years  later,  the  condition  of  the  Em- 
pire was  no  better  than  before.  In  1 507,  Quirini,  writing 
to  the  Venetian  Senate,  thus  describes  the  conditions :  * 
"There  are  in  this  nation  four  classes  of  people:  princes 
of  the  Empire;  gentlemen  (knights);  burghers  of  free 
cities ;  and  peasants  (populo  minuto) .  The  princes l  gen- 
erally have  some  quarrel  among  themselves  or  else  with 
some  free  city,  and,  if  they  are  poor,  most  of  them  permit 
their  retainers  to  assault  and  rob  on  the  roads.  The  gen- 
tlemen generally  live  in  some  castle  outside  of  the  cities 
or  in  the  court  of  some  prince  or  among  the  hills  in 
solitary  places.  They  are  poor,  enemies  to  the  burghers, 
and  so  proud  that,  under  no  circumstances,  will  they  inter- 
marry with  a  mercantile  family,  or  debase  themselves  to 

1  Relazioni.     Serie  I,  Vol.  VT,  page  24. 


348  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

practice  trade  with  them.  They  make  a  living  as  captains 
of  mercenaries,  and  when  that  fails,  do  nothing  except 
hunt  or  rob  on  the  roads.  If  this  King  (Maximilian) 
did  not  enforce  a  very  strict  justice,  it  would  not  be  safe  to 
ride  through  any  part  of  Germany ;  in  spite  of  it,  in  Fran- 
conia,  where  there  are  many  of  these  gentlemen,  and  also 
around  Nuremberg-  and  in  other  places,  the  roads  are  most 
insecure." 

This  was  just  at  the  time  when  Maximilian,  by  war  and 
political  use  of  his  influence,  had  really  obtained  power  in 
the  Empire ;  and  he  proposed  to  the  Reichstag  reforms  to 
entirely  suppress  the  habits  of  the  robber  barons.  He 
had  two  objects  in  view.  He  wanted  to  provide  an  efficient 
court  of  justice,  presided  over  by  an  imperial  chief 
judge  and  composed  of  sixteen  judges,  two  from  the 
Hapsburg  hereditary  lands,  six  named  by  the  Elec- 
tors, six  from  each  circle  of  the  Empire,  and  two 
from  the  lesser  nobility.  To  enforce  its  decisions,  as 
well  as  to  carry  out  the  orders  of  the  Imperial  Council,  he 
proposed  an  imperial  police,  to  be  commanded  by  four 
marshals,  of  the  Lower  Rhine,  the  Upper  Rhine,  the 
Elbe  and  the  Danube.  To  each  of  these  was  assigned  two 
councilors  and  twenty-four  knights.  For  criminal  mat- 
ters, especially  the  repression  of  robbery,  there  was  to  be 
a  Marshal  for  the  Empire.  He  was  to  go  from  place  to 
place,  and  enforce  _order,  with  the  aid  of  the  marshal  of 
any  circle  whose  roads  were  unsafe.  For  these  proposi- 
tions Maximilian  found  but  little  support  in  the  Reichstag. 
They  feared  that  such  an  arrangement  would  enable  him 
to  destroy  all  local  power.  The  Reichstag  refused  to  vote 
for  the  imperial  police.  For,  in  truth,  the  party  Maximil- 


MAXIMILIAN  I  349 

ian  had  rallied  round  him,  was  not  the  sort  of  a  party 
from  which  he  could  have  expected  much  help  in  any 
unification  of  the  Empire.  It  was  composed  of  princes, 
bishops  and  nobles,  many  of  them  selfish  and  ambitious, 
most  of  them  promoted  by  his  influence  playing  on  per- 
sonal desires.  The  opposition  princes  were  many  of  them 
equally  selfish.  Those  who  complained  bitterly  of  the 
disorders  of  the  Empire,  were  not  eager  for  any  reform 
which  threatened  loss  to  their  independence.  The  only 
possibility  of  forming  an  imperial  party  which  would 
have  backed  him  in  meeting  the  crying  needs  of  the  Em- 
pire, lay  in  imitating  the  Tudors  and  seeking  the  aid  of 
the  burghers  against  the  nobility.  Around  such  a  union 
of  the  middle  classes  and  the  crown,  he  might  have  rallied 
a  support  which  would  have  enabled  him  to  do  his  first 
duty.  But  this  step  Maximilian  was,  by  his  training,  his 
tastes  and  his  past  experience,  incapable  of  making.  The 
classes  whose  privileges  had  survived  from  feudal  times, 
always  seemed  to  him  superior  to  the  classes  who  had 
won  wealth  and  political  influence  in  more  recent  genera- 
tions, nor  did  the  idea  of  turning  for  permanent  support 
toward  the  burghers  occur  to  him  as  a  possibility. 

To  form  such  a  party  would  have  been  very  dif- 
ficult, for  the  cities  also  were  selfish  and  jealous.  But 
the  other  support  was  shown  by  experience  to  be  in- 
sufficient, and  Maximilian,  having  refused  the  radical 
reform  and  accused  its  dead  leader,  Berthold  of  Mayence, 
of  treachery  and  lack  of  wisdom,  was  bound  to  find  some 
other  plan  to  take  its  place.  His  great  purposes  in  Italy 
required  the  support  of  Germany.  He  could  not  get  it 
unless  he  gave  Germany  something  beside  a  paper  plan  to 


350  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

subdue  feuds  and  public  disorder.  This  he  did  not  do. 
In  the  Weiss  Kunig,  indeed,  he  wrote, — "He  allowed  in 
his  realm  no  robbery,  but  it  was  perfectly  safe  to  travel 
through  his  realm."  The  statement  is  false.1  Succes- 
sive Reichstags  abounded  in  renewed  complaints  of  feuds 
and  robbery.  The  members  of  the  Reichstag  of 
1517  informed  the  imperial  commissioners  that  the 
imperial  court  was  useless.  Many  of  the  judges 
were  not  fitted  for  their  places — the  calendar  choked 
— the  procedure  intolerably  slow.  A  decision  in 
a  suitor's  favour  did  not  help  him,  for  it  could 
not  be  enforced.  Evil  doers  were  not  afraid  even 
of  the  ban  of  the  Empire.  The  lower  courts  were  no 
better,  and  there  was  in  Germany  a  frightful  and  general 
state  of  disorder.  Travellers  were  not  safe  on  land  or 
river.  The  peasants  who  fed  all,  were  going  to  destruc- 
tion. Widows  and  orphans  were  not  protected.  No 
messenger,  no  merchant,  no  pilgrim,  could  traverse  the 
roads  to  .perform  his  pious  work  or  give  his  message  or 
attend  to  his  affairs.  These  general  complaints  were  ac- 
companied by  a  large  number  of  special  instances,  and 
they  show  that  Maximilian's  reforms  had  not  worked. 
Perhaps  they  would  have  failed  under  all  possible  efforts. 
At  all  events  it  is  certain  that  the  greater  part  of  Maximil- 
ian's energies  were  directed  to  his  plans  across  the  Alps. 
He  did  do  something,  but  it  lies  on  the  face  of  the  facts  of 
his  war  against  Venice  and  his  eager  engagement  in  the 

1  It  It  not  true  even  of  his  own  hereditary  duchies.  Representative  com- 
mittees from  the  Austrian  duchies  complained  bitterly  in  1518  of  the  preva- 
lence of  highway  robbery. 

Archiv  fur  Kunde  Oesterrichischer  Geschichts  Quellen.     1854,  239. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  351 

ten  years  of  diplomacy  spun  like  spider  webs  about  its 
action,  that  he  did  not  do  all  he  could. 

There  were  in  Germany  a  lot  of  titled  evil  doers  hard- 
ened in  lawlessness.  Kunz  Schott,  for  example,  caught  a 
Nuremberg  burgher  and  ordered  him  to  lay  his  hand  on 
a  block.  "At  first  he  would  not  do  it  and  then  he  said  to 
him — 'Lay  it  out  or  I'll  thrust  a  sword  through  you.' 
The  burgher  said, — 'Dear  lord,  I  beg  you  have  pity  on 
my  three  children  about  this.'  He  answered, — 'Lay  it 
down  at  once.'  Then  he  laid  his  left  hand  down,  but  he 
had  to  lay  down  the  right  hand.  Schott  said  'You  won't 
write  me  any  more  letters,'  and  he  drew  his  sword  and 
struck.  But  the  burgher  jerked  his  hand  and  the  blow 
fell  on  his  fingers.  But  he  had  to  put  it  down  again. 
He  struck  again  to  cut  off  his  hand  at  the  joint.  He 
jerked  again  and  he  struck  him  in  the  middle  of  the  hand 
so  that  the  thumb  hung  by  the  skin,  and  Schott  thrust  the 
cut  off  hand  in  his  bosom,  saying, — 'Go  carry  that  home 
to  your  masters'  "  *  (the  Nuremberg  Councilors).  Such 
scoundrels  as  are  pictured  in  this  rude  miniature  from  a 
burgher's  diary,  were  not  uncommon  in  Germany,  and  if, 
instead  of  carrying  the  imperial  banner  over  the  Alps, 
Maximilian  had  spread  it  against  selected  examples  of 
this  class,  and  personally  superintended  their  hanging  on 
the  towers  of  their  own  castles,  it  would  have  gained 
more  for  his  own  glory,  for  Germany,  and  ultimately  for 
the  house  of  Hapsburg,  than  the  finest  diplomatic  ar- 
rangement by  which  he  hoped  to  induce  someone  else  to 
conquer  north  Italy  and  hand  its  best  towns  over  to  him. 

But  when  peace  with  Venice  and  France  left  Maximil- 

1  Chroniken  der  deutschen  Stadtc,  Vol.  XI,  page  605. 


352  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ian's  hands  free  in  1517,  he  did  not  propose  to  turn  his 
energy  toward  the  monotonous  details  of  the  administra- 
tion of  justice  and  finance.  Two  things  occupied  his 
attention  and  filled  his  speech.  The  first  was  the  suc- 
cession of  his  grandson  Charles  to  the  Empire.  In  spite 
of  his  promise  to  Louis  of  Hungary  and  Henry  of  Eng- 
land, Maximilian  had  thought  for  a  long  time  about  secur- 
ing the  succession  to  Charles.  In  1517,  signs  of  break 
down  in  his  once  extraordinary  health  began  to  appear. 
The  doctors  interfered  with  his  habits  and  hampered  his 
work,  and  his  condition  and  their  orders  reminded  him  of 
the  chances  of  mortality.  There  was  only  one  effective 
argument  to  use  with  the  Electors  to  induce  them 
to  elect  Charles,  King  of  the  Romans,  bribery.  The 
Golden  Bull  expressly  forbade  both  direct  and  indirect 
bribery,  but  the  Emperor  could  grant  dispensations,  and 
offer  the  men  he  bribed  exemptions  from  the  law  he  asked 
them  to  break.  This  gave  him  a  great  advantage  over 
the  rival  candidate,  Francis  I.  Maximilian  had  no  money 
and  no  means  of  raising  any.  Never  did  the  ruler  whom 
the  Italians  had  long  ago  nicknamed  "pochi  danari,"  so 
well  deserve  his  name.  Progressive  bankruptcy  had 
brought  him  to  the  point  where  he  literally  lived  on  his 
debts.  He  could  only  secure  one  thousand  gulden  from 
his  chief  creditor  the  house  of  Fugger,  after  repeated  at- 
tempts, and  the  plea  that  if  he  could  not  get  the  loan,  "His 
Majesty  would  have  nothing  to  eat."  Charles  had  to 
raise  the  cash  to  bribe  the  Electors  on  his  resources  as  the 
King  of  Spain.  Prices  were  high,  and  the  total  of  all  the 
amounts  promised  was  the  enormous  sum  of  between  five 
and  six  hundred  thousand  gulden.  Privileges  and  prom- 


MAXIMILIAN  I  353 

ises  of  good  marriages  were  additional  inducements.  Trie 
result  was,  that  on  August  27th,  1518,  four  Electors  and 
the  ambassadors  of  a  fifth,  signed  an  agreement  to  elect 
Charles,  King  of  the  Romans. 

But  in  spite  of  this  triumph  of  influence,  the  four  months 
Maximilian  had  to  live,  did  not  bring  him  the  pleasure  of 
being  sure  that  the  crown  of  Empire  was  to  join  the  ducal 
crowns  of  the  Netherlands,  the  royal  crowns  of  Spain  and 
Naples  and  many  other  diadems,  on  the  head  of  his  oldest 
grandson.  Just  what  the  hitch  was  does  not  appear  with 
certainty.  The  Papal  objection  to  the  union  of  the 
crowns  of  Naples  and  the  Empire,  an  objection  surviving 
from  the  conflicts  of  the  Papacy  and  the  Empire  in  which 
the  imperial  family  of  Hohenstaufen  had  perished  during 
the  thirteenth  century,  played  some  part.  But  this  formal 
objection,  afterward  overcome,  could  not  have  been  the 
real  obstacle.  Probably  Charles  was  unable  to  raise 
enough  to  pay  cash  on  the  completion  of  the  bargain.  The 
election  therefore  went  over  until  after  Maximilian's 
death,  when  the  total  price  rose  about  sixty  per  cent 

The  skillful  conduct  of  this  afterwards  successful  nego- 
tiation, was  not  the  only  matter  which  occupied  Maximil- 
ian's attention  when  the  close  of  the  war  with  Venice  and 
peace  with  France,  gave  him  leisure.  The  reign  of  Mo- 
hammed II,  who,  in  1453,  took  Constantinople,  marked  a 
process  of  consolidation  in  the  Turkish  Empire  and  an  ex- 
tension of  its  power,  which  met  its  first  serious  disaster 
in  arms  at  Lepanto  in  1571.  The  victories  of  Selim  I 
in  Persia,  Asia  Minor  and  Egypt,  between  1514  and  1517, 
as  well  as  the  boldness  of  his  slave  hunting  fleets  on  the 


354  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Italian  coasts,1  pressed  the  standing  menace  of  the  Turkish 
power  upon  the  attention  of  Pope  Leo  X.  He  wrote  a 
letter  to  all  Christian  princes,  exhorting  them  to  lay  aside 
their  quarrels  and  unite  under  the  standard  of  the  cross 
against  the  common  foe  of  Christendom.  And  in  March, 
1517,  the  Lateran  Council  voted  to  impose  two  taxes  on 
Christendom.  One  resolution  authorized  the  sale  of  in- 
dulgencies  in  order  to  restore  St.  Peters,  so  fallen  into 
ruins  that  the  relics  of  the  Apostles  were  exposed  to  in- 
jury by  the  weather ;  the  other  ordered  the  payment  of  a 
tax  on  the  clerical  property  of  the  world,  and  the  sale  of 
another  indulgence  to  aid  the  Church  in  arming  Europe 
for  a  crusade  against  the  Turk.  Many  good  churchmen 
did  not  believe  that  this  money  would  be  used  for  the 
purposes  to  which  it  was  voted.  A  number  of  bishops  of 
the  council  insisted  that  the  Turkish  tenth  should  not 
be  raised  or  the  Turkish  indulgence  sold,  until  the 
crusade  had  begun,  and  they  were  beaten  on  the  vote  by  a 
very  small  majority.  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
their  suspicions  were  justified  by  facts.  There  is  absolute 
documentary  proof  of  it  in  regard  to  parts  of  these  mon- 
ies. A  receipt  has  been  preserved,  in  which  the  Pope's 
nephew  acknowledges  one  hundred  thousand  livres  from 
the  King  of  France,  to  be  repaid  out  of  the  Turkish  tenth. 
And  it  is  perfectly  plain  that  a  large  part  of  the  income  of 
the  sale  of  the  indulgence  for  the  rebuilding  of  St.  Peters, 
went  to  repay  the  banking  firm  of  Fugger  for  advances  to 
enable  the  Archbishop  of  Mayence  to  pay  the  papacy  the 

1  One  of  these  entered  the  Tiber  and  threatened  to  take  the  Pope  himself 
prisoner.     Letters  and  Papers,  II,  2017. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  355 

customary  enormous  fees  for  the  granting  of  the  pallium, 
or  badge  of  his  office. 

The  way  in  which  the  indulgence  traffic  exploited  the 
faith  of  the  common  people  to  line  the  pockets  of  greedy 
prelates  or  princes,  and  the  reckless  preaching  which,  to 
push  the  sale,  often  distorted  to  the  injury  of  religion  and 
the  undermining  of  morality,  the  true  doctrines  of  the 
Church  concerning  indulgences,  had  again  and  again  been 
denounced  by  laymen  and  clergymen.  An  Augustinian 
monk  who  was  one  of  the  city  pastors  and  University 
professors  of  Wittenberg,  a  small  city  in  Saxony,  be- 
came aware,  through  the  confessions  of  his  people,  that 
great  harm  was  being  done  to  faith  by  the  preaching  of  a 
vender  of  the  St.  Peter's  indulgence.  He  issued  in  Octo- 
ber, 1517,  as  a  professor  of  theology  sworn  to  defend  the 
truth  of  God,  a  protest  against  these  abuses  and  an  appeal 
to  the  Pope  to  suppress  them.  Directed  toward  a  pro- 
fessional audience,  it  called  out  a  great  popular  response, 
and  Martin  Luther  became  a  voice  of  Germany  against 
the  indulgence  traffic,  as  an  open  and  scandalous  sign  of 
manifest  corruption  in  the  ecclesiastical  administration. 
For,  as  yet,  he  neither  intended  nor  suggested  attack  upon 
the  doctrine  or  constitution  of  the  Church. 

What  Germany  thought  about  the  Turkish  tenths, 
which,  though  levied  on  church  property,  must  of  course 
come  finally  out  of  the  pockets  of  the  people,  found  ex- 
pression in  various  forms  during  the  Reichstag  which 
opened  at  Augsburg  in  the  Spring  of  1518. 

The  Emperor  and  the  Papal  Legate  appeared  before  it 
in  the  attitude  which  corresponded  to  the  mediaeval  ideal 
of  the  Empire  as  a  double  headed  institution,  where  the 


356  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

sacred  layman,  chosen  by  God  to  bear  the  sword  as  a 
terror  to  evil  doers,  worked  in  perfect  harmony  with  the 
Vicar  of  Christ,  the  head  of  the  world  in  all  spiritual 
things.  The  Legate,  at  high  mass  in  the  cathedral,  be- 
stowed a  cardinal's  hat  on  the  Archbishop  of  Mayence,  for 
the  payment  of  whose  debts  the  indulgence  which  roused 
Luther's  protest  had  been  sold,  and  gave  a  consecrated 
sword  to  the  Emperor,  exhorting  him,  in  the  name  of  the 
Vicar  of  Christ,  to  conquer  Constantinople  and  Jerusalem 
and  include  the  earth  within  the  bounds  of  the  Empire 
and  the  Church.  How  much  the  Emperor  really  expected 
the  crusade  to  take  the  shape  of  an  army,  is  hard  to  say. 
He  had  written,  to  the  papal  letter  of  the  beginning  of 
1517,  a  most  enthusiastic  answer,  in  which  the  man  who 
has  studied  Maximilian  most  profoundly,  thinks  he  can 
detect  the  note  of  irony.  He  afterward  worked  out  a 
military  plan  to  occupy  three  years,  which  he  sent  to  the 
various  princes  of  the  world.  It  was  to  begin  with  the 
conquest  of  north  Africa  by  Hapsburg  forces  under  the 
lead  of  the  Emperor,  while  Francis  and  Henry  remained 
at  home  to  maintain  European  peace  and  keep  down  re- 
bellion. It  has  been  suggested  that  this  plan  may  have 
concealed  the  desire  to  add  north  Africa  to  the  Hapsburg 
domains,  without  any  serious  intention  of  assaulting  Con- 
stantinople in  the  third  year.  This  is  possible.  It  is  also 
possible,  and  more  probable,1  that  Maximilian's  errant 
fancy  was  again  carrying  him  through  the  realms  of 
glorious  visions  and  his  mind,  drugged  with  egotism  as 

1  Compare  development  of  this  plan  in  the  successive  sketches  presented  to 
the  Auschusse  of  the  Austrian  Duchies.  See  Archiv  fur  Oest.  Geschichts 
forschung,  1854,  207  ff.  A  reasonable  motive  for  this  plan  is  there  shown  in 
the  desire  to  prevent  the  complete  subjugation  of  the  African  prince  by  the 
Sultan  and  the  consequent  increase  of  his  power  to  attack  the  Danubian  lands. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  357 

with  opium,  was  finding  a  pleasure  in  the  world  of  dreams 
it  had  failed  to  find  in  the  world  of  reality.  At  all  events, 
Legate  and  Emperor  exhorted  the  Reichstag  to  vote  that 
every  fifty  householders  should  supply  and  arm  a  man 
against  the  Turks,  and  that  a  tax  of  a  tenth  should  be 
paid  by  the  German  clergy,  a  tax  of  a  twentieth  by  the 
German  laity,  for  the  support  of  the  crusaders. 

The  feelings  of  the  assembly,  and  indeed  of  all  Ger- 
many, were  shown  with  the  least  restraint  in  an  anony- 
mous pamphlet  circulated  at  Augsburg.  A  few  extracts  will 
show  its  tone,  which  only  expresses  without  reserve  the 
meaning  of  a  number  of  formal  requests  and  exhortations 
sent  to  the  Reichstag  from  many  sides. 

"To  break  the  rule  of  the  uncleanest  foe  who  tries  with 
all  his  strength  to  blot  out  the  name  of  Christ,  is  a  holy 
effort  that  can  be  blamed  by  no  one  who  would  rather 
serve  Christ  than  the  Turk.  But  under  these  pretences  to 
plunder  the  ignorant  people,  to  suck  dry  the  milk  of  the 
nation,  is  a  crime  as  bad  as  what  the  Turk  does,  not  be- 
cause of  the  money,  but  because  it  is  unbearable  that  Satan 
should  change  himself  into  such  an  angel — should  mingle 
in  the  cup  of  piety  the  poison  of  godlessness — that  the 
people,  giving  for  the  glory  of  God,  should  really  give  to 
avarice,  the  mother  of  false  religion."  "If  the  money  sent 
to  Rome  for  fees  for  the  induction  of  bishops  were  saved, 
it  would  be  enough  for  the  Turkish  war."  "The  Pope  is 
richer  from  his  own  lands  than  any  other  Christian 
prince,  and  still  we  buy  palliums  (Archbishops'  cloaks) 
and  send  mule  loads  of  gold  to  Rome,  building  gallows  to 
hang  Christ,  promise  presents,  swap  gold  for  lead"  (the 
seals  of  papal  bulls) .  "Where  is  there  a  college  of  priests 


358  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

that  is  not  stained?  Who  has  brought  into  Germany 
the  wickedest  imaginable  habits  and  has  taught  things  a 
decent  man  cannot  even  name?  *  *  *  This  horrible 
flood  has  proved  itself  out  of  the  Romish  filth  over  the 
whole  world,  until  there  is  no  wilderness  where  before 
dwelt  only  wild  beasts,  which  is  free  from  it.  *  *  * 
You  wish  to  fight  the  Turk?  *  *  *  Seek  him  in 
Italy,  not  in  Asia.  Against  the  Asiatic  Turk  every  Chris- 
tian prince  can  defend  himself,  but  the  whole  Christian 
world  is  not  enough  to  restrain  the  other.  You  can  only 
satisfy  this  hell-hound  with  streams  of  gold.  It  needs  no 
weapon.  Gold  can  do  more  than  horse  or  foot." 

Under  the  influence  of  such  a  spirit,  the  Reichstag  pre- 
pared their  Gravamina,  or  complaints  of  injuries  and 
abuses  inflicted  by  the  Roman  Curia  on  Germany.  They 
repeated  and  sharpened  similar  charges  which  had  been 
presented  at  Reichstags  since  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  These  complaints  did  not  come  simply  from 
laymen.  The  bishop  of  Liittich  sent,  in  the  name  of  the 
clergy  of  his  diocese,  a  complaint  of  abuses  in  the  Church 
through  corrupt  use  of  patronage  centering  in  the  Roman 
Curia.  It  illustrated  the  counts  of  the  indictments  with  in- 
stances. It  denounced  the  hunting  of  benefices,  the  mul- 
tiplication of  chaplaincies  and  papal  officials,  pluralities,  or 
the  accumulation  of  many  Church  offices  in  one  hand,  the 
consequent  terrible  drain  of  money  from  churches  and 
people,  and  the  resultant  degradation  of  religion  and  the 
service  of  God.  "The  offices  are  filled  with  false  shep- 
herds, who  try  to  skin  the  sheep  instead  of  feeding  them." 
"Now,  oh!  Emperor  and  Reichstag,  beg  the  Pope  that 
out  of  fatherly  love  and  the  watchfulness  of  a  shepherd, 


MAXIMILIAN  I  359 

he  may  abolish  these  and  other  abuses,  with  the  list  of 
which  a  book  could  be  filled." 

These  complaints  must  not  be  taken  as  the  utterances  of 
heretics.  They  came  out  of  the  consciousness  that  suc- 
cessive popes  and  large  numbers  of  cardinals,  cared  more 
for  the  wealth  and  worldly  power  of  their  offices  than  for 
their  spiritual  duties.  The  court  of  Rome  was  so  openly 
materialized — the  money  which  flowed  there  from  all 
parts  of  the  world  was  so  manifestly  spent  on  worldly 
objects — many  of  the  men  in  power  there  were  so  scandal- 
ously lacking  in  any  vocation  for  the  care  of  souls,  that, 
all  over  the  world,  the  zealous  who  knew  the  facts  prayed, 
and  those  careless  about  religion,  who  saw  their  gold  flow- 
ing over  the  Alps  to  enrich  papal  families,  cursed.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  it  was  a  common- 
place among  men  of  intelligence  everywhere,  that  the 
Curia  at  Rome  was  desperately  corrupt,  and,  in  conse- 
quence, the  Church  terribly  in  need  of  reformation.  Such 
a  perception  of  obvious  facts  did  not  in  the  least  imply 
heresy  in  the  perceiver,  and  many  of  the  noblest  men  who 
felt  this  situation  keenly  and  helped  to  remedy  it  at  the 
Council  of  Trent,  hated  and  fought  schism  all  their  lives. 

In  no  country  of  the  world  had  the  people  suffered  more 
from  ecclesiastical  abuses  than  in  Germany,  and,  in  the 
water-shed  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Elbe,  the  perception  of 
the  condition  of  the  Church  and  the  corrupt  patronage,  the 
greed,  bribery  and  ambition  which  lay  at  the  bottom  of  it, 
had  passed  from  the  classes  to  the  masses. 

Just  as  the  Reichstag  had  prefaced  every  vote  of  sup- 
plies to  Maximilian  by  a  demand  for  a  redress  of  griev- 
ances and  a  reformation  of  the  Empire,  so  now  they  gave  a 


360  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

negative  or  evasive  answer  to  the  demand  for  new  eccle- 
siastical taxes,  and  pressed  for  redress  of  grievances.  And 
in  this  instance,  they  backed  their  refusal  by  a  strong  state- 
ment that,  in  the  present  state  of  popular  discontent  with 
the  administration  of  the  Church,  the  attempt  to  levy  a 
new  ecclesiasical  tax  would  not  be  borne  by  "the  common 
man," 

Maximilian  had  often  entertained  the  idea  of  a  reforma- 
tion of  the  German  Church,  and  even  a  violent  reformation 
of  the  Universal  Church  in  head  and  members.  He  con- 
sidered joining  the  rebellion  which  Louis  XII  tried  to 
create  against  Julius  II.  Had  he  done  so,  it  would  have 
been,  historically  considered,  nothing  extraordinary.  It 
was  only  a  hundred  years  since  the  largest  assembly  of 
the  Church  ever  held,  the  council  of  Constance,  had  de- 
posed the  Pope  and  elected  another.  He  had  considered 
a  more  unprecedented  intervention  with  the  traditional 
government  of  the  Church,  in  his  plan,  whatever  it  was, 
"to  become  Pope  and  Emperor."  These  schemes  were 
to  a  large  extent  political  moves,  suggested  to  Maximil- 
ian's mind  by  the  exigencies  of  the  diplomatic  entangle- 
ments resulting  from  the  league  of  Cambray.  A  large 
motive  for  them  in  his  mind,  was  to  bring  pressure  to  bear 
that  should  force  the  Pope  into  line  with  political  or 
dynastic  plans.  But  he  was  not  without  a  real  reformer's 
impulse.  This  double  motive  appears  in  his  letter  to  his 
daughter  Margaret,  of  June,  1510.  "That  cursed  priest, 
the  Pope,  won't  on  any  account  let  us  go  to  Rome  in  arms 
for  our  imperial  crown  in  company  with  the  French,  be- 
cause he  is  afraid  to  be  called  before  a  council  by  us  two 
for  the  great  sins  and  abuses  which  he  and  his  predecessors 


MAXIMILIAN  I  361 

have  committed  and  daily  commit,  and  also  some  cardinals 
which  fear  reformation,  etc."  * 

The  touch  of  reforming  zeal  suggested  in  this  letter, 
had  moved  him  to  ask  (Sept.  1510)  Jacob  Wimpheling, 
formerly  cathedral  preacher  at  Spires,  a  zealous  church- 
man and  an  orthodox  theologian,  most  active  in  defense 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  immaculate  conception  of  the 
Virgin,  to  answer  certain  questions  looking  toward  re- 
form of  the  German  Church.  For  years,  Wimpheling, 
with  his  two  intimates,  the  celebrated  popular  preacher, 
Geiler,  cathedral  preacher  at  Strassburg,  and  the  pious 
satirist  Brant,  chancellor  of  Strassburg,  had  been  de- 
nouncing the  decay  of  religion  and  the  corruptions  and 
abuses  of  the  Church  which  gave  it  opportunity  to  in- 
crease. 

His  reply  pointed  out  ten  distinct  ecclesiastical  abuses 
centering  in  the  corrupt  use  of  patronage  at  Rome,  under 
which  religion  in  Germany  was  suffering. 

I.  The  way  in  which  Popes  violate  by  dispensations, 
revocations  and  suspensions,  the  agreements  of  their  pre- 
decessors. 

2 — 3.  Interference  with  elections  of  German  prelates 
and  heads  of  cathedral  chapters. 

4 — 5.  Granting  of  German  church  offices  to  members 
of  the  Roman  court,  even  "expectations,"  conferring  those 
offices  on  absentees  before  the  incumbents  are  dead. 

6.  Annates,  a  heavy  tax  on  new  incumbents  of  higher 
offices. 

7.  Granting  of  pastorates  "to  unworthy  candidates, 
fitter  to  pasture  and  guide  mules  than  men." 

ll,e  Clay,  VoL  I,  page  294. 


362  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

8.  The  indulgence  trade  pushed  to  make  money. 

9.  The  Turkish  tenths  asked  for  war  against  the 
Turks — "and  no  expedition  ever  sails  against  them." 

10.     The  summoning  to  Rome  of  ecclesiastical  cases 
which  ought  to  be  tried  in  Germany. 

"If  these  things  go  on  and  the  drain  of  German  gold 
to  Rome  continues,  there  is  grave  fear  lest  the  common 
people,  unable  to  bear  that  addition  to  their  other  burdens, 
should  follow  the  example  of  the  Bohemians  in  the  last 
century,  rise  in  arms  and  separate  from  Rome." 

But  to  this  clear  and  concise  statement  of  abuses,  re- 
peating older  documents  of  the  same  sort,  he  added  no 
practicable  plan  to  remove  them.  All  he  had  to  suggest 
was  a  request  to  the  Holy  Father  to  treat  his  German 
sons  better.  He  even  pointed  out  the  danger  of  strenu- 
ous action.  The  three  clerical  electors  might  not  stand  by 
the  Emperor,  for  fear  of  papal  censures.  The  Pope 
might  launch  an  interdict  suspending  all  religious  serv- 
ices in  Germany,  which  the  people  would  not  bear.  The 
begging  friars  might  rouse  the  people  against  him.  It  was 
even  possible  that  the  Pope  should  do  what  popes  had 
done  to  other  emperors,  deprive  him  of  his  crown  and 
set  up  another.1 

Such  a  counsel  was  not  apt  to  strengthen  the  reforming, 
as  against  the  political  motive,  in  the  Emperor's  mind. 
And  when  a  new  combination  made  the  Pope  a  factor 

1  See  Un  Re'formateur  Catholique  .  .  .  Jean  Geiler  de  Kaysersberg. 
Par  1/abbe  L,.  Dacheux.  Paris  and  Strassbourg,  1876. 

Brieger's  Zeitschrift  fur  Kirchen  geschichte,  Vol.  Ill,  page  203  ff. 

Gebhardt,  Bruno;  Die  Gravamina  der  Deutschen  Nation  gegen  den  romischen 
Hof.  zweite  Auflage.  Breslau,  1895. 

Schmidt,  Charles.  Histoire  Litteraire  de  I/Alsace  a  la  fin  du  XV*  at  au 
commencement  du  XVI«  siecle.  Paris,  3879. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  363 

favourable  to  his  political  plans,  Maximilian  gave  little 
attention  to  reform. 

This  neglect  came,  however,  rather  from  preoccupation 
than  from  indifference.  Maximilian  was  a  genuinely 
religious  man.  He  was  regular  and  zealous  in  his  devo- 
tions, and  compiled  a  prayer  book.  In  a  crisis  of  his 
affairs,  he  wrote,  with  evident  genuineness  of  feeling,  to 
one  of  his  faithful  followers,  that  he  was  "become  the 
scorn  of  the  whole  world,"  but  he  "lived  always  in  hope, 
and  comforted  himself  with  the  word  of  the  Gospel  that 
the  Lord  would  not  forsake  the  righteous  and  that  he  al- 
ways chastised  those  whom  He  loved."  *  He  showed  his 
faith  in  conduct.  He  was  free  from  the  national  dis- 
grace of  drunkenness,  proverbial  among  the  Germans  of 
his  day,  and  notorious  among  the  princes.  His  singular 
decency  of  speech  and  his  dislike  of  adultery,  won  him  a 
high  reputation  for  chastity 2  which,  according  to  the 
moral  standards  of  the  age,  was  not  impaired  by  the  fact 
that  he  had,  during  the  twenty  years  of  his  widowhood, 
eight  illegitimate  children.3  In  a  chapter  of  his  allegori- 
cal poem  of  Teuerdank  he  represents  himself,  in  answer 
to  the  temptation  of  Satan,  laying  down  three  rules  of 
life :— 4 

1  MSS.  in  Dresden  Archives,  quoted  by  Ulmann,  Vol.  I,  164. 

1  Among  others  Cuspinian. 

8  See  list  of  his  children  in  Birk  Fugger.  Spiegel  der  Ehren  des  Ertz 
Hauses  Oesterreich  erweitert  durch  L.  von  Birken.  The  objections  to  relying 
on  this  work  shown  by  Ranke  would  not  apply  to  an  item  of  general  knowledge 
like  this. 

*  The  completed  study  of  the  MSS.  has  made  evident  to  Laschitzer,  editor 
of  the  final  edition,  that  Maximilian  is  responsible  for  the  entire  poem.  It  is 
certain  that  "Without  his  consent  no  verse  or  illustration  of  the  poem  was 
sent  to  the  printer."  *  *  *  "In  short,  not  only  the  idea  but  also  the  general 
plan  and  order  of  the  poem,  not  simply  in  the  large  but  in  all  the  details,  is  to 
be  attributed  to  Maximilian."  This  does  away  with  the  old  conclusion  that 
the  moralizing  parts  of  the  poem  were  to  be  attributed  to  the  imperial  secretary. 


364  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

1.  Bodily  desires  are  to  be  ruled  by  God's  command- 
ments, and  reason. 

2.  God's  favour  is  worth  more  than  honour  among 
men. 

3.  A  man  who  hopes  in  God  must  not  break  his  oath.1 
Religion  influenced  not  only  his  feeling  and  his  con- 
duct  but   also   his   thought.     His    active   mind   turned 
towards  problems  of  the  spiritual  realm.    Abbot  Trithe- 
mius  of  Boppard,  published,  together  with  his  own  an- 
swers, a  series  of  questions  the  Emperor  left  with  him 
after  a  journey  in  the  imperial  train  along  the  Rhine,  in 
1508. 

1.  Why  does  God  prefer  being  believed  in  by  mortals, 
to  being  known  by  them  ? 

2.  Can  heathen,  ignorant  of  the  Christian  religion, 
and  faithful  to  the  religion  they  know,  be  saved  ? 

3.  Whence  comes  it  that  the  prophets  of  false  religions 
work  miracles  ? 

4.  Why  is  the  Holy  Scripture  neither  complete  nor 
perfectly  clear,  lacking  much  which  is  demanded  for  com- 
plete faith? 

5.  How  is  it  that  sorcerers  are  allowed  power  over 
evil  spirits? 

6.  How  is  the  doctrine  of  the  righteousness  of  God 
reconcilable  with  the  permission  of  so  much  evil,  often  in- 
jurious to  pious  men  ? 

7.  Can  a  special  providence  over  the  fortunes  of  men, 
more  especially  over  everything  that  happens,  be  proved 
by  Scripture  and  reason? 

Not  only  was  Maximilian  a  person  of  real  religious 

iTeuerdank  Capitel,  10. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  365 

feeling,  affected  to  some  extent  in  all  his  activities  by  the 
doctrine  of  the  church,  but  he  had  a  strong  feeling  of  his 
duty,  to  "the  common  man,"  who,  as  he  was  repeatedly 
told,  suffered  most  in  mind,  morals  and  pocket  from 
ecclesiastical  abuses.  He  asked  Geiler  to  form  a  collec- 
tion of  maxims  upon  the  conduct  which  a  prince,  desirous 
of  making  his  subjects  prosperous  and  happy,  ought  to 
follow.  He  closes  the  little  book  of  instructions  on  the 
beloved  sport  of  hunting,  which  he  wrote,  towards  the  end 
of  his  life,  for  his  grandsons  and  descendants,  thus: — • 
"Always  rejoice  in  the  great  pleasure  of  hunting,  for  thy 
recreation  and  health,  also  for  the  comfort  of  thy  subjects, 
because  you  can,  through  hunting,  become  known  to  them, 
the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich.  The  rich  as  well  as  the  poor 
daily  has  access  to  you  while  you  are  hunting,  so  that  they 
can  complain  of  their  necessities  and  present  them  to 
you,  and  you  can  hear  their  complaints  with  pleasure ;  be- 
cause, during  the  enjoyment  of  the  hunt,  you  can  hear  the 
petitions  of  the  poor.  To  this  end,  you  must  always  take 
your  secretary  and  some  councilors  with  you  on  your 
hunting  trips,  so  that  you  are  ready  to  give  satisfaction  to 
the  common  man  when  he  comes  to  see  you  and  comes 
near  you;  a  thing  you  can  do  better  on  a  hunting  trip 
than  in  houses.  In  order  to  lose  no  time,  you  must  never 
omit  that  except  when  the  falcons  fly  or  the  hounds 
run."  1  A  coloured  picture  he  had  made  for  his  Fischerei 
buch,  or  list  of  fishing  waters,  interprets  this  word  to  his 
descendants  of  the  house  of  Hapsburg,  and  shows  us  his 

1  Kaiser  Maximilian  I.  geheimes  Jagdbuch,  etc.  Ch.  G.  von  Karajan  zweite 
Auflage,  Wien,  1881.  The  halting  English  of  the  translation  is  an  attempt 
to  reproduce  the  naive  style  of  the  Emperor,  who  wrote  the  only  MSS.  of  this 
little  treatise  entirely  in  his  own  hand  and  apparently  without  any  criticism  or 
help  from  his  secretaries. 


366  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

own  habit.  In  one  corner  the  Emperor  has  dismounted 
from  his  horse.  On  the  ground  lie  his  cloak  and  riding 
trousers.  The  climbing  irons  for  following  chamois  on 
the  cliffs,  have  just  been  buckled  onto  his  feet,  but  he 
delays  to  receive  a  petition  from  a  peasant  who  kneels 
before  him.1 

In  spite  of  his  sincere  religious  belief  and  the  serious- 
ness with  which  he  took  his  office  as  the  doer  of 
justice  to  "the  common  man/'  these  last  appeals  to  lead 
in  the  reform  of  the  Church,  the  most  forcible  of  the  many 
which  had  come  to  him  during  twenty  years,  seem  to 
have  made  no  impression  upon  him.  To  Luther's  pro- 
test about  indulgences  he  gave  no  heed.  Maximilian 
never  saw  Luther,  whose  name  was  then  on  the  lips  of 
most  Germans.  But  he  was  a  poor  judge  of  character  and 
ability.  And,  in  all  probability,  even  if  he  had  seen  the 
Wittenberg  professor,  he  would  have  failed  to  recognize 
that  power,  which,  within  a  few  years,  even  those  who 
thought  the  power  Satanic,  admitted  was  in  the  man. 

Signs  of  storms  were  common.  In  1516  Aleander,  aft- 
erward papal  nuncio,  wrote  to  the  Pope, — "Germany  is 
only  waiting  for  some  fellow  to  open  his  mouth  against 
Rome."  A  thousand  omens  foretold  the  schism  of  Ger- 
many from  the  Holy  See.  By  word  and  deed,  a  genera- 
tion of  discontented  peasants,  had  giving  warning  of  the 
terrible  convulsion  of  the  revolt  of  1525.  It  does  not  ap- 
pear that  Maximilian  read  the  signs  of  the  times.  It  was 
afterwards  said — "Germany  is  a  magnificent  horse  which 
only  needs  a  rider."  Charles,  whose  ability  was  as  much 

1  Das  Fischereibuch  Kaiser  Maximilian  I.  Ludwig  Frieherr  von  Lazarini  und 
Dr.  Michael  Mayr.  Innsbruck,  1901.  Plate  to  page  1. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  367 

greater  than  that  of  his  grandfather  as  his  parts  were 
less  brilliant,  tried  for  thirty-five  years  to  make  the  horse 
go  where  he  wanted,  and  then  dismounted  to  put  his  son 
in  the  saddle.  Perhaps  no  one  could  have  ridden  the 
horse.  At  all  events,  in  1518,  Maximilian  did  not  even  try. 

Probably  the  last  reason  why  Maximilian  never  serious- 
ly undertook  the  reform  of  the  Church  which  the  human- 
ists expected  of  him  at  his  accession,  was  that  he  had 
added  a  personal  article  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Church,  and 
clung  to  it  with  the  most  passionate  and  intimate  convic- 
tion. It  was  the  belief  that  the  house  of  Hapsburg  was 
elected  of  God  to  play  an  enormous  part  in  the  destinies  of 
the  world.  To  his  mind  it  was  inconceivable  that  any- 
thing which  injured  their  rights,  could  in  the  end  help 
mankind.  Inevitably,  and  as  by  natural  law,  out  of  any 
entanglement  of  motives  and  reasons,  his  mind  drifted 
to  the  conclusion  that  his  plans  for  the  present  power  and 
future  prospects  of  the  Hapsburgs,  had  the  right  of  way. 
Everything  else  must  wait. 

When  the  Emperor  left  the  Reichstag  of  Augsburg  the 
last  week  of  September,  1518,  he  was  in  no  mood  for  any 
action.  In  his  youth,  Maximilian  had  a  fund  of  health 
and  energy  which  seemed  exhaustless.  The  secretary 
who  wrote  to  his  dictation,  and  under  his  supervision,  the 
Latin  autobiography,  in  one  paragraph  of  it,  tells  how  he 
saw  Maximilian  go  out  at  dawn  and  bring  in  three  stags 
— then  exercise  in  arms,  using  up  three  horses,  receiving  a 
wound  in  the  hand  and  giving  a  fall  to  his  opponent  that 
proved  fatal.  Then  he  changed  to  a  magnificent  court 
dress,  danced  and  kept  the  ball  going  until  the  dawn  of 


368  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

another  day.1  In  1518,  Maximilian  was  not  yet  sixty, 
but  he  had  drawn  terribly  on  his  reserve  strength.  The 
disastrous  end  of  the  long  Venetian  war,  the  decline  of 
his  reputation  as  a  soldier,  the  arrangement  with  France 
forced  on  him  by  his  own  grandson,  the  refusal  of  the 
Reichstag  to  do  anything  he  wanted,  must  have  weighed 
heavily  on  his  mind.  With  his  usual  courage  he  kept  his 
disappointments  to  himself.  During  the  Reichstag  he 
was  active  in  those  great  dances  and  banquets  he  liked 
to  plan  or  share.  He  had  always  enjoyed  the  society 
of  the  wives  and  daughters  of  the  city  patricians.  Once 
when  he  was  ready  to  leave  a  Nuremberg  dance,  the  ladies 
took  off  his  boots  and  spurs,  hid  them  and  begged  him 
to  stay  the  dance  out.  Maximilian  stayed  and  danced 
from  noon  until  dark  and,  after  supper,  long  into  the 
night.2  Of  all  the  German  cities,  Augsburg  had  long 
been  the  pleasantest  to  him.  He  had  a  presentiment  that 
he  should  never  see  Augsburg  again,  and  he  asked  his  old 
favourites  to  dance  without  the  veils  they  were  in  the  habit 
of  wearing  at  public  balls.  But  though  he  kept  this 
smiling  face  as  long  as  the  Reichstag  lasted,  his  heart  was 
very  heavy ;  and  when  it  closed,  he  made  for  his  beloved 
hunting  grounds  of  Tirol. 

At  Innsbruck  a  new  trouble  met  him.  The  government 
of  Tirol  was  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy,  and  the  council 
had  not  been  able  to  pay  inn  bills  for  twenty-four  thou- 
sand gulden,  he  had  contracted  several  years  before.  The 
inn  keepers,  therefore,  refused  to  receive  his  court.  This 
public  shame,  and  the  situation  of  the  government,  so 

1  Latin  life.     Jahrbucher  der  Kb.   $.,  Vol.  VI,  page  432   (16). 
» Chroniken   der  deutschen   Stadte,   Vol.   XI,  page  723. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  369 

desperate  that  the  council  resigned  and  could  be  per- 
suaded to  keep  merely  the  name  of  councilors  for  three 
months,  deeply  angered  Maximilian.  And  two  of  his, 
intimates  think  his  excitement  brought  on  the  illness, 
which  attacked  him.  In  spite  of  his  weakness,  he  travelled 
in  a  litter  and  by  boat  some  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  but 
at  Wels,  in  Austria,  in  the  end  of  November,  it  was  plain 
that  his  life  was  in  danger. 

Doctors  were  sent  for  from  Vienna.  Maximilian  had  a 
high  opinion  of  his  own  medical  knowledge.  He  relates 
in  the  Weiss  Kunig  that,  in  his  youth,  a  doctor  who  taught 
him  medicine,  told  Frederick  he  could  not  teach  his  pu- 
pil anything  more,  and  records  how  twice  he  saved  his 
own  life  by  acting  against  the  mistaken  orders  of  the 
physicians.  This  knowledge,  or  the  Viennese  doctors' 
advice,  or  the  voice  of  nature,  made  him  aware  some  time 
before  death  came  that  his  end  was  near.  In  the  end  of 
December  he  made  his  will,  and  on  the  I2th  of  Janu- 
ary he  died. 

All  that  we  know  of  his  last  days  is  highly  character- 
istic. He  faced  death  with  courage  and  self  control,  con- 
fessed and  took  the  rites  of  the  Church  with  a  tranquil 
mind  and  the  entirely  good  conscience  that  appears  in  all 
his  references  to  his  own  life  and  deeds.  His  gentleness, 
kindness  and  patience  to  his  attendants,  were  unchanged. 
His  mind  was  active  to  the  end,  and  he  turned  to  the  pleas- 
ures which  had  solaced  his  labours  for  many  years.  He 
had  always  been  a  patron  of  musicians  and  loved  singing 
birds,  which  he  kept  near  him  in  cages  when  he  could. 
Tradition  even  assigns  to  him  the  Volkslied  "Innsbruck 
Ich  muss  dich  lassen."  It  is  probable  that  music  soothed 


370  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  hours  which  must  have  been  heavy  for  one  so  unused 
to  confinement.  We  know  that  he  clung  to  the  pleasures 
of  literature  and  art  until  the  last. 

Literature  and  art  had  to  him  a  peculiar  use 
and  meaning.  The  bulk  of  his  patronage  had 
been  expended  in  using  the  skill  of  masters  of 
form,  colour  and  words,  to  illustrate  the  glory  of 
the  house  of  Hapsburg  and  the  deeds  of  its  greatest  de- 
scendant, Maximilian  I.  For  this  artists  had  drawn, 
cast  bronze  and  painted;  scholars  had  made  geneological 
and  historical  researches;  secretaries  and  writers  had  re- 
corded his  reminiscences  and  polished  the  style  of  his 
dictations.  The  scholars  had  reached  results  highly  sat- 
isfactory to  Maximilian.  They  had  solemnly  concluded 
that  it  was  proved  by  authentic  records, — "that  the  Arch- 
duchy of  Austria  was  the  first  Kingdom  privileged  by 
Julius  Caesar  and  his  successors  when  they  had  all  the 
world  in  subjection."  *  They  had,  after  long  debates,  es- 
tablished a  genealogical  line  leading  back  through  Hec- 
tor to  Noah.2  They  had  discovered  one  hundred  and 
twenty-three  saints  given  to  the  Church  by  the  house  of 
Hapsburg,  and  Maximilian  had  ordered  wood  cuts  made 
of  all  of  them.3  Dr.  Mennel,  one  of  the  historiographers, 
was  at  Wels  during  Maximilian's  last  illness.  He  has 
told  how  the  Emperor  asked  him,  just  before  death  came, 
if  he  had  anything  new  and  pleasant  to  read  aloud  to 

1  Chmel  Urkunden,  etc.,  zur  Geschichte  Maximilian  I.  Bibliothek  des 
literarischen  Vereins  in  Stuttgart,  Vol.  X.  Instruction  to  the  valet  de  chambre 
of  the  Archduke  of  Austria. 

1  See  Laschitzer  introduction  to  the  Genealogy  in  Jahrbiicher  der  Kh.  S., 
etc.,  Vol.  VII,  and  also  the  very  amusing  extract  quoted  from  the  Fugger  MSS. 
in  Deutsches  Kunst  Blatt,  Vol.  V. 

ajahrbucher,   Kh.    S.,  etc.,  Vol.   IV. 


MAXIMILIAN  I  371 

shorten  tHe  sleepless  nights.  For  several  nights  through, 
Mennel  read  him  the  legends  of  the  saints  of  his  race  and 
stories  of  his  ancestors.  For  the  ruling  passion  of  Max- 
imilian was  strong  to  the  end  of  life. 

His  will,  besides  leaving  full  directions  for  the  founda- 
tion of  nine  poor  houses  and  for  his  burial  in  a  coffin  he 
had  carried  with  him  for  five  years,  commended  to  his  ex- 
ecutors the  publication  of  his  books  and  chronicles.  All 
of  those  which  were  left  at  all  complete,  were  either  ac- 
counts of  the  glories  of  his  house,  or  illustrated  catalogues 
of  his  own  possessions,  or  records  of  his  life  and  deeds 
for  the  instruction  of  his  descendants,  and,  so  far  as  we 
can  judge,  all  those  he  ever  planned  were  to  be  in  some 
way  related  to  the  same  topics.1 

Maximilian  also  left  in  his  will  directions  for  the  com- 
pletion of  his  tomb.  On  the  plan  of  this  he  had  worked 
for  many  years.  The  general  idea  was  his  own,  and  he 
had  constantly  criticised  and  directed  the  sketches  and 
castings  for  the  details.  His  final  design  was  a  life-sized 
figure  of  himself  kneeling  on  a  bronze  sarcophagus 
adorned  with  twenty-four  reliefs  showing  his  great  deeds. 
The  central  mass  was  to  be  decorated  and  surounded  by 
forty  life-sized  figures  of  Maximilian's  heroic  relatives, 
and  one  hundred  smaller  statues  of  saints  of  the  lineage  of 
the  Hapsburgs.2  The  list  of  heroes  included  King 
Arthur,  Theodoric,  Charlemagne  and  Julius  Caesar.  For 

1  The  prayer  book  seems  to  be  an  exception.  But  the  editor  of  the  illustra- 
tions made  for  it  holds  that  it  was  intended  as  a  book  of  prayers  for  the  Order 
of  St.  George,  to  which  he  invited  all  the  princes  and  nobles  of  the  world,  in 
order  that  under  his  leadership  they  might  drive  the  Turk  from  Constantinople, 
to  the  glory  of  God  and  the  House  of  Austria,  in  the  person  of  Maximilian. 
See  Jahrbucher  des  Kh.  s'..  etc.,  Vol.  XX. 

*  Jahrbucher,  Kh.  S.,  etc.,  Vol.  XI. 


372  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

including  Charlemagne  and  Julius  Caesar  in  this  family 
gathering  he  had  the  authority  of  his  historiographers. 
But,  so  far  as  we  know,  King  Arthur  and  Theodoric  were 
added  to  the  group  as  the  result  of  his  own  historical 
studies.  Only  twelve  of  the  large  statues  and  a  few  of 
the  smaller  ones,  were  done.  Two  of  them,  Vischer's 
splendid  figures  of  Arthur  and  Theodoric,  made  six  years 
before,  were  still  in  pawn,  and  the  debt  for  which  they 
were  held  was  not  paid  until  1532. 

For  Maximilian  had  been  hampered  in  completing  his 
tomb,  as  in  all  of  his  magnificent  undertakings,  by  pov- 
erty. His  large  income  was  dwarfed  by  his  larger  de- 
signs. A  statement  could  hardly  be  framed  which  would 
exaggerate  the  continuous  influence  of  this  lack  of  money 
upon  his  career.  It  was  the  immediate  cause  of  almost 
all  those  delays  in  the  execution  of  plans,  which  created 
the  common  opinion  of  his  contemporaries,  outside  of  the 
German  humanists,  that  he  was  slow,  inefficient  or  un- 
trustworthy. 

He  recognized  the  fact  that  his  finances  were  on  an 
unsound  basis,  but  he  never  really  took  it  into  account 
in  his  plans.  He  was  fond  of  saying,  in  the  peculiar  Latin 
for  which  he  was  praised  by  the  humanists,  "Est  enim 
una  res  miserabilis  nostra  paupertas,"  but  he  never 
learned  to  cut  his  coat  according  to  his  cloth.  Extrava- 
gant habits,  the  outcome  not  only  of  taste  and  pride,  but 
also  of  policy,  grew  upon  him.  He  ordered  in  Augsburg 
a  set  of  armor  at  one  hundred  thousand  gulden,  to  appear 
before  the  Reichstag.  And  in  1515,  when  everything  he 
owned  was  covered  with  mortgages,  he  spent  two  bun- 


MAXIMILIAN  I  373 

dred  thousand  gulden  in  banquets  to  the  visiting  Kings 
at  Vienna.1 

The  only  part  of  Maximilian's  estate  which  was  in  a 
sound  condition  at  his  death,  was  the  treasure  of  the  Haps- 
burgs.  He  had  inherited  a  great  amount  of  plate  and 
jewels  from  his  father.  He  kept  adding  to  it,  and  his  let- 
ters continually  record  orders  for  plate  and  the  purchase 
of  pearls,  rubies  or  diamonds.  To  one  of  these,  ordering 
the  councilors  at  Innsbruck  to  pay  one  thousand  gulden 
to  the  Fuggers  for  two  jewels,  they  reply,  that,  if  they 
settle  this  bill,  they  will  have  no  money  left  to  pay  the 
personal  expenses  of  the  Archduchess.  He  occasionally 
pawned  portions  of  his  plate  or  jewels.  His  credit  was 
so  poor  in  the  neighbourhood  of  his  favourite  city  of 
Innsbruck,  that  he  had  to  leave  a  ring  in  pledge  with  the 
hostesses  of  three  inns  for  bills  of  six  gulden.2  But  in 
spite  of  all  obstacles,  the  treasure  of  the  House  of  Haps- 
burg  increased  while  Maximilian  was  its  head.  When 
his  younger  grandson,  Ferdinand,  opened  the  chests 
which  contained  it,  he  was  astonished  at  its  amount. 

But  though  the  treasure  of  his  house  had  not  suffered 
from  Maximilian's  poverty,  his  greatest  artistic  project 
had.  When  he  tried,  in  1517,  to  push  the  casting  of  the 
statues  for  his  tomb,  the  council  at  Nuremberg  refused 
to  allow  the  artists  of  the  city  to  accept  commissions  from 
the  Emperor,  lest  the  city  should  have  to  pay  for  the  com- 
pleted work.  A  compromise  was  arranged  by  which  half 

1  Letters  and  Papers,  Vol.  II,  part  I,  number  202. 

2  At  least  I  can  see  no  other  explanation   for  entries  in  the  accounts  of  the 
Council  which  record  the  redeeming  of  these  rings  from  the  hostesses  of  inns. 
Jahrbucher   Kh.    S.,    Ill,   Nos.    2371-2391-2393.      See   the   documents   calendared 
here  and  in   the  back  of  other  volumes   for  additions   to  the-  treasure  of  the 
Hapsburgs. 


374  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

of  the  city  tax  was  to  be  devoted  towards  extinguishing 
Maximilian's  existing  debt  to  the  city.  The  other  half 
was  henceforth  to  be  used  to  pay  for  the  work  on  the 
monument.  But  the  arrangement  fell  through,  because 
the  Elector  of  Saxony  claimed  the  entire  tax  had  already 
been  pledged  to  him  to  cover  a  debt  Maximilian  owed. 

Maximilian's  death,  therefore,  left  his  tomb  nothing 
but  scattered  fragments.  It  was  not  until  the  end  of  the 
century  that  descendants  completed  it  on  a  smaller  scale 
than  the  original  design. 

Though  the  greatest  work  he  planned  has  probably 
gained  by  being  freed  from  the  forest  and  underbrush  of 
statues  big  and  little  with  which  he  proposed  to  surround 
it,  Maximilian  has  won  his  most  lasting  fame  as  a  patron 
of  literature  and  art.  The  man  whose  features  Holbein 
engraved  in  the  Dance  of  Death,  for  whom  Diirer  drew 
the  designs  for  the  border  of  the  Prayer-book,  at  whose 
orders  Burgkmair  handled  the  burin,  whose  suggestions 
Vischer  cast  in  bronze,  and  whose  tomb  is  ornamented  by 
marble  reliefs  called  by  Thorwaldsen  the  most  perfect 
works  of  their  kind,  cannot  be  forgotten  in  the  history  of 
art  because  of  any  criticisms  of  his  taste  or  motives.  His 
taste  was  not  highly  discriminating.  Men  who  have  fol- 
lowed with  care  and  accuracy  the  details  of  his  artistic 
commissions,  suggest  a  lack  of  reason  for  believing  that 
he  could  have  seen  any  difference  between  the  work  of 
Sesselchreiber  and  the  daring  idealism  of  Vischer;  and 
he  seems  to  have  been  no  better  pleased  with  the  illustra- 
tions Burgkmair  or  Diirer  did  for  him  than  with  those 
of  inferior  men.  But  what  he  may  have  lacked  in  critical 
power,  he  made  up  in  zeal,  and  in  a  patron  of  art,  readiness 


MAXIMILIAN  I  375 

to  recognize  merit  and  find  pleasure  even  in  imperfect 
work,  is  better  than  keenness  in  detecting  faults. 

It  is  clear  that  his  love  for  art  centred  around 
his  dominant  passions;  thirst  for  distinction  and 
family  pride.  But  we  must  not  be  too  quick  to 
condemn  it  on  that  account.  Few  men  have 
served  the  muses  for  naught.  Many  of  the  masters  of  lit- 
erature, from  the  Greeks  to  Goethe,  have  shown  in  their 
works  the  love  of  fame  mixed  with  the  love  of  beauty. 
That  combination  of  motives  was  very  common  in  the 
age  of  Maximilian.  General  judgments  comparing  one 
epoch  with  another  are  apt  to  be  false ;  but  even  a  cursory 
comparison  of  mediaeval  and  renascence  art,  suggests  that 
the  patrons  of  the  former  gave,  and  its  servants  worked, 
far  less  for  their  own  glory  and  far  more  for  the  glory 
of  God,  than  the  patrons  and  artists  of  the  latter.  Max- 
imilian may  only  have  been  more  frank  than  his  contem- 
poraries, in  so  dispensing  his  patronage  of  art  that  it 
leaves  upon  one  who  reviews  it  all,  an  irresistible  impres- 
sion that  the  larger  part  of  his  interest  in  it,  grew  from  the 
hope  of  presenting  his  figure  to  posterity  as  the  greatest 
member  of  the  glorious  house  of  Hapsburg,  and  illustrat- 
ing the  lessons  of  his  example  to  descendants  who  might 
raise  the  dynasty  to  the  heights  of  power  where  his  day 
dreams  had  placed  it;  with  Italy,  Spain,  Portugal,  Eng- 
land, part  of  a  dismembered  France,  the  Netherlands, 
Germany  and  the  Danube  Valley  to  the  Black  Sea,  under 
the  sway  of  its  sceptre. 


APPENDIX 

REGINALD  POLE  AND  THOMAS  CROMWELL: 

AN  EXAMINATION  OF  THE  APOLOGIA  AD  CARO- 

LUM  QUINTUM 

THOMAS  CROMWELL,  beginning  life  as  a  merchant's  clerk 
without  money  or  influence,  finally  rose  to  the  highest  au- 
thority ever  wielded  by  a  British  subject.  The  portraits  of 
this  remarkable  man  presented  by  historians,  have  been  most 
influenced  by  accounts  of  him  left  by  two  of  his  contempora- 
ries. John  Foxe  put  him  into  the  Book  of  Martyrs  as  one 
who,  having  greatly  served  "the  Gospel",  died  by  the  mach- 
inations of  the  enemies  of  truth.  Reginald  Pole,  cardinal 
and  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  denounced  him  as  a  false 
counselor  who  helped  the  descent  of  a  once  innocent  and 
pious  king  into  tyranny,  crime,  and  irreligion  by  flattering 
evil  passions  for  his  own  gain. 

The  first  of  these  judgments  upon  Cromwell  became  preva- 
lent in  England  during  the  lifetime  of  his  grandson  and 
continued  dominant  for  many  generations.  But  the  image 
of  the  martyr,  suggested  by  Foxe,  has  been  to  a  great  ex- 
tent replaced  by  the  picture  of  an  unscrupulous  adventurer, 
loving  chiefly  the  profits  of  power,  the  English  disciple 
of  Machiavelli,  flattering  the  ideals  of  his  age  while  he 
sneered  at  them,  cruel,  treacherous,  and,  even  when  he 
sought  great  ends,  pursuing  them  by  means  baser  than  those 
generally  used  by  his  contemporaries.  The  traits  of  which 
this  latter  image  are  composed,  have  been  drawn  from  dif- 
ferent sources,  and  the  image,  therefore,  varies  according 

377 


378  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

to  the  emphasis  which  the  writer  may  have  chosen  to  lay 
upon  this  or  that  evil  feature  of  the  character  of  the  earl 
of  Essex.  But  about  all  these  images  of  the  unscrupulous 
adventurer  type  there  is  the  same  sinister  atmosphere,  and 
one  who  has  read  the  account  of  Reginald  Pole,  easily  recog- 
nizes that  the  presence  of  that  sinister  atmosphere,  throw- 
ing Cromwell  into  relief  as  the  "arch  knave"  of  his  time, 
is  due  to  its  influence.  This  is  the  first  record  of  a  critical 
examination  of  this  often-quoted  account  of  Cromwell,  and 
it  gives  the  writer's  reasons  for  concluding  that  Pole's 
sketch  of  Cromwell's  character  and  motives,  is  biased,  im- 
probable, and  inaccurate. 

Reginald  Pole  was  of  the  blood  royal,  tracing  descent 
from  the  Duke  of  Clarence  and  from  Warwick  the  king- 
maker. He  was  sent  to  Oxford  by  royal  bounty,  and,  at 
twenty-one,  went  abroad  to  study,  with  a  royal  pension  of 
loo/.,  equal  in  modern  value  to  some  $5,000  or  $6,000.  In 
addition  he  enjoyed  the  income  of  three  ecclesiastical  bene- 
fices which  had  been  presented  to  him.  He  stayed  five  years 
abroad  as  a  student,  and  gained  the  friendship  of  some  of 
the  most  distinguished  scholars  of  the  day.  On  his  return 
to  England,  he  was  one  of  the  very  few  English  noblemen 
(he  had  entered  Magdalen  College  as  a  nobleman)  who 
might  justly  be  called  highly  educated.  When  Henry  VIII 
wanted  to  repudiate  his  wife,  Pole,  who  had  again  gone 
abroad  to  study  in  Paris  and  still  received  his  large  pension 
as  "king's  scholar",  was  employed  to  collect  opinions  from 
the  doctors  of  the  university  in  favor  of  the  invalidity  of 
marriage  to  a  brother's  widow.  Having  successfully  com- 
pleted this  task,  which  he  so  hated  that  he  delegated  its 
details  to  another,  he  returned  to  England  by  royal  order 
in  July,  1530,  and  shortly  after  was  offered  the  archbishop- 
ric of  York,  rendered  vacant  by  the  death  of  Wolsey. 


APPENDIX  379 

'  Knowing  that  if  he  accepted  it  he  must  approve  the  repudia- 
tion of  Catherine,  Pole  manfully  refused,  had  a  stormy  in- 
terview with  the  King,  and  in  1532  obtained  permission  to 
go  abroad.  His  pension  was  continued  and  he  received  an- 
other ecclesiastical  benefice. 

Two  years  after  Pole  left  England,  a  demand  came  to 
him  from  the  King  that  he  should  write  his  opinion  on  two 
points:  Is  marriage  with  a  brother's  widow  permissible? 
Is  the  supremacy  of  the  pope  instituted  by  God?  Pole's 
answer  to  these  questions  grew  into  a  treatise  entitled  In 
Defense  of  the  Unity  of  the  Church  (Pro  Ecclesiastics 
Unitatis  Defensione,  etc.  It  consists  of  four  books,  and  ex- 
presses in  places  great  affection  for  Henry  and  the  grief 
Pole  feels  in  being  obliged  to  accuse  him.  The  first  book 
attacks  the  new  royal  title  of  Supreme  Head  of  the  Church 
in  England,  and  threatens  Henry  with  the  divine  vengeance 
for  the  death  of  More  and  Fisher.  The  second  defends  the 
supreme  authority  of  the  Pope,  especially  against  the  treatise 
of  Sampson,  which  had  been  sent  to  him  by  the  King.  The 
third  book  exhorts  Henry  to  prepare  his  mind  to  receive 
these  arguments  by  laying  aside  his  pride,  and  then  pro- 
ceeds, in  an  ever-rising  storm  of  invective,  to  denounce  his 
sins.  Pole  recites  the  facts  in  regard  to  Anne  Boleyn  and 
shows  the  injustice  to  Catherine,  calls  the  King  a  robber  and 
persecutor  of  the  Church,  charges  him  with  having  wasted 
in  senseless  extravagances  more  taxes  than  his  predecessors 
had  collected  in  five  hundred  years,  calls  him  guilty  of  an 
infamous  incest,  applies  the  strongest  possible  epithets  to 
Anne  Boleyn,  and  asks  Henry  if  he  thinks  her  daughter 
will  be  accepted  as  queen  by  the  aristocratic  families  of 
England.  He  denounces  Henry  for  having  slaughtered  his 
nobles  on  slight  pretenses  and  filled  his  court  with  wretched 
creatures.  He  calls  up  against  him  the  blood  of  More,  Fisher, 


380  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

and  the  Carthusian  martyrs,  saying  that  Nero  and  Domitian 
had  not  killed  such  men.  He  stigmatizes  him  as  worse  than 
the  Tunisian  pirates.  In  an  apostrophe  to  Charles  V,  Pole 
begs  him  to  defer  the  Turkish  war  in  order  to  attack  this 
new  enemy  worse  than  the  Turk;  for  schism  comes  from 
the  same  source  as  paganism.  Indeed,  this  English  Turkish 
seed  has  produced  worse  results  than  are  to  be  seen  among 
the  real  Turks.  The  real  Turks  tolerate  the  true  religion, 
but  this  king  defends  his  false  religion  with  the  sword. 
Therefore  let  the  orthodox  head  of  the  Christian  republic 
draw  the  sword  against  him.  And,  pointing  out  that  the 
English  people  have  before  driven  kings  from  the  throne, 
Pole  calls  upon  England  to  renew  her  ancient  spirit,  look- 
ing to  the  Emperor  for  aid.  Henry  is  a  sacrilegious  per- 
jurer, who  has  broken  his  oaths  and  overthrown  the  founda- 
tions of  his  kingdom — justice,  clemency,  liberality.  He  has 
squandered  England's  treasures  on  unworthy  favorites,  and 
despoiled  every  condition  of  men.  He  has  made  sport  of  his 
nobility,  plundered  his  clergy,  never  loved  his  people.  He 
might  be  glad  to  have  upon  his  tomb  that  epitaph  of  Sar- 
danapalus  which  Aristotle  said  was  fitter  for  a  bull  than 
for  a  man,  that  no  room  might  be  left  for  one  not  less  true 
but  more  shameful ;  if,  indeed,  he  might  hope  for  any  tomb, 
and  not,  in  the  words  of  Isaiah,  be  cast  out  from  his  sepul- 
chre as  a  useless  trunk,  as  a  putrid  corpse  have  no  fellow- 
ship with  his  dead  forefathers.  His  shame  and  ignominy 
are  known  to  every  one,  and  all  powers  sacred  and  secular 
are  now  leagued  to  cut  off  so  pernicious  a  member  from 
the  body  of  Christendom.  Whither  can  he  flee  for  refuge? 
His  riches  stolen  from  the  Church  will  not  help  him.  No 
tyrant  had  perished  from  poverty.  Neither  will  the  many 
adherents  who  now  support  him  save  him;  Richard  III 
had  been  killed  by  his  father  in  spite  of  a  great  army, 


APPENDIX  381 

Henry  had  but  one  refuge  from  unexampled  dangers — pen- 
itence. And  in  the  fourth  book,  asking  pardon  for  his  harsh 
words,  and  "struggling  with  love  and  pity,"  Pole  exhorts 
the  King  to  penitence ;  that  is,  to  repent  of  his  sins,  return 
to  the  Church,  and  ask  for  absolution,  and  "in  the  word  of 
the  prophet  your  iniquity  will  not  be  your  ruin."1 

Pole  came  to  manhood  at  the  crisis  of  a  great  conflict 
between  two  ideals  for  the  European  world.  On  the  one 
hand,  there  was  the  mediaeval  ideal  of  Christendom  as  an 
organism  with  a  visible  head  whose  just  sentence  anticipated 
the  sentence  of  the  great  day  of  judgment,  made  the  rebel 
against  divine  commandment  on  whom  it  fell,  an  outlaw 
in  this  world,  and  sent  him  to  hell  after  death.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  was  the  forming  ideal  of  Christendom  as 
a  series  of  distinct  national  institutions,  each  containing  a 
divinely-constituted  seat  of  authority  that  rightly  rejected 
all  outside  interference  in  its  own  affairs,  whose  national 
church  admitted  no  foreign  authority  to  damn  its  apostate 
members,  whose  courts  acknowledged  no  just  power  in  any 
foreign  tribunal  to  judge  concerning  the  honor,  the  prop- 
erty, or  the  life  of  its  citizens.  These  two  ideals  were  to 
engage  four  generations  in  wars.  The  wars  were  com- 
plicated by  theological  opinions  and  religious  beliefs,  race 
hatred  and  class  feeling,  dynastic  greed  and  personal  ambi- 
tion, but  behind  them  all,  from  the  battle  of  Miihlberg  to 
the  peace  of  Westphalia,  there  lay  this  central  question, 
whether  Christendom  was  or  was  not  divinely  constituted 
as  an  organic  unity,  possessing  somewhere,  either  in  pope 
or  council,  or  in  both,  a  common,  visible,  and  ultimate  au- 

1  Pole's  description  of  his  own  book,  in  Epistolarum  Reginald*  Poli  S.  R.  E. 
Cardinalis  et  aliorum  ad  ipsum  Collectio,  Brescia,  1744-1757,  5  volumes,  I.  74. 
Pole's  characterization  of  the  third  book  is  expanded  here  by  illustrative 
instances  drawn  from  the  book  itself.  Pole  says  it  is  written  "acerbe  et  vehe- 
menter." 


382  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

thority,  appointed  to  define  truth  and  judge  righteousness 
for  every  nation  and  every  man.  The  trumpet-call  for  that 
fight  had  come  to  Pole.  Asked  to  say  whether,  in  the  last 
analysis,  the  supreme  authority  over  England  in  questions  in- 
volving a  moral  issue,  was  at  Rome  or  in  London,  taste, 
reason,  and  conscience  led  him  to  stand  by  the  old  ideal. 
He  threw  down  the  glove  to  Henry  as  a  tyrant  who  had  be- 
trayed England,  because,  in  withdrawing  from  the  papal 
obedience,  he  had  broken  the  unity  of  Christendom,  the  God- 
given  guarantee  of  saving  truth  and  social  order. 

It  is  plain  from  Pole's  letters  at  the  time  he  was  writing 
this  treatise,1  that  he  thought  himself  to  be  doing  some  great 
service  to  the  cause  of  the  Church.  Just  what  service  he 
hoped  to  do  his  cause  by  interpolating  into  his  answer  to 
Henry's  questions  a  diatribe  in  a  tone  of  such  fierce  in- 
vective that  some  of  his  intimate  friends,  ardent  church- 
men, advised  the  correction  of  the  manuscript,  does  not  ap- 
pear to  a  modern  reader  at  first  sight.  A  search  through  his 
writings  makes  it  plain  that  Pole  hoped,  now  that  the  pas- 
sion for  Anne  Boleyn  which  had  driven  Henry  into  his 
impiety  was  cooled,  to  frighten  him  back  to  the  path  of  right- 
eousness by  the  threat  of  insurrection  backed  by  a  crusade 
against  England.2  It  seems  strange  that  Pole  could  have 
thought  it  so  easy  to  frighten  a  Tudor,  or  could  have  im- 
agined that  the  insensate  pride,  backed  by  a  morbid  con- 
science, that  ruled  Henry's  character,  would  submit  to  private 
contumely  or  bow  to  public  disgrace  without  a  furious  strug- 
gle, but  it  is  quite  plain  that  he  did  cherish  this  hope,  and 
sent  his  book  to  Henry  in  manuscript  with  this  idea.8  There 
was  of  course  danger  that  the  book  might  be  used  in  pro- 


rf.,  I,  427,  429,  438. 

*  Ibid.,  I,  475;  V,  156;  also  James  Gairdner,  Letters  and  Papers,  Foreign 
and  Domestic,  of  the  Reign  of  Henry  VIII,  XII,  part  I,  No.  429;  part  II,  Nos. 
107,  552. 

*Poli  Epistole,   V,  61. 


APPENDIX  383 

ducing  the  sort  of  civil  war  appealing  to  foreign  aid  which 
afterward  desolated  France  and  Germany.  And  Henry's 
effort  to  destroy  the  manuscript,  strengthened  Pole's  resolve 
to  keep  it  hanging  over  his  head  like  a  sword  of  Damocles. 
But  in  the  year  1539,  during  his  absence  from  Rome,  it 
was  printed,  without  his  consent,  by  friends  to  whom  he  had 
confided  it,  and  "not  without  the  command  of  the  pope."1 
His  writings  show  that  at  several  different  times  in  his 
life  he  contemplated  publishing  it.  He  wrote  three  pref- 
aces, all  printed  for  the  first  time  two  hundred  years  after 
his  death.  The  first  one  is  entitled  by  the  editor  Apologia 
Reginaldi  Poll  ad  Carolum  V  Casarem  super  quatuor  Libris 
a  se  scriptis  de  Unitate  Ecclesice?  The  second  preface  is 
entitled  Proemtium  alteruin  cjusdem  libri  a  Reginaldo  Polo 
transmissi  ad  Regem  Scotia.  Internal  evidence  shows  that 
it  was  written  not  long  after  the  fall  of  Cromwell,  who  was 
arrested  June  10,  1540.  The  third,  which  breaks  off  ab- 
ruptly, is  entitled  Espistola  ad  Edwardum*  VI.  Anglia  Re- 
gem  de  opere  adversus  Henricum  patrem,  etc.  This  must 
have  been  written  1547-1553.  In  it  Pole  says  he  had  heard 
that  the  Protestants  intended  to  publish  his  treatise  in  de- 
fense of  the  unity  of  the  Church,  and  thought  it  better  to 
do  so  himself.  Shelhorn  conjectures  that  he  abandoned 
this  intention  on  account  of  the  death  of  Edward  VI  and 
the  accession  of  Mary. 

lEpistola  ad  Edwardum  VI,  Section  xlviii,  ibid.,  IV. 

2  There  are  only  four  editions  of  the  Pro  Ecclesiastical  Unitatis  Defensione : 
(1)  Rome,  without  date.  (2)  Strassburg,  1555.  (3)  Ingolstadt,  1587.  (4) 
Bibliotheca  Maxima  Pontificia,  Tome  18,  169S.  Bibliographical  manuals  and 
catalogues  assign  the  first  to  1536  (British  Museum  Catalogue,  1535?;  Brunei, 
circa  1536;  Grasse,  vers  1536;  etc.).  This  assignment  overlooks  Pole's  own 
account  in  the  Epistola  ad  Edwardum  VI,  cited  above,  which  fixes  the  date  as 
1539.  This  date  also  agrees  with  the  preface  of  the  Strassburg  edition,  which 
says  (1555),  "This  book  has  been  published  as  I  suppose  about  fifteen  years." 
Schelhorn  pointed  out  in  1737  in  his  Amoenitates  Historic?  Ecclesiastics  et 
Literarice,  Leipzig  and  Frankfort,  2  vols.,  1737-1738,  I,  some  of  the  reasons  for 
assuming  this  date. 


384  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

In  this  third  preface,  Pole  says  that  he  had  been  very 
unwilling  to  have  the  book  circulated,  but  some  copies  had 
been  taken  without  his  knowledge  from  the  places  where 
they  were  stored,  and  had  come  into  the  hands  of  many. 
The  rarity  of  the  first  edition  suggests  the  diligence  of  the 
author  in  preventing  general  circulation.  The  second  edi- 
tion was  issued  in  1555  by  the  Protestant  apologist  Ver- 
gerio,  who  said  that  Pole  had  concealed  his  book  and  given 
copies  only  to  cardinals,  popes,  kings,  bishops,  princes. 
Pole's  anxiety  to  prevent  the  general  circulation  of  the 
book,  appears  in  his  answer  to  the  letter  of  Damianus  a 
Goes  (October  12,  I54O),1  who  had  heard  of  a  printed  copy 
and  asked  for  one.  Pole  replies,  "Up  to  this  time  I  have 
published  nothing,  and  how  my  writings  have  come  into 
those  hands  where  you  say  they  have  come,  I  do  not  know. 
When  I  do  publish,  I  will  satisfy  your  desire."  Now  the 
Apologia  shows,  that,  at  the  end  of  1538,  or  the  beginning 
of  1539,  Pole  did  intend  to  publish  this  book  and  send  it  to 
the  Emperor.2  And  in  the  Proemium  ad  Regem  Scotia,  he 
says,  just  about  the  time  he  refused  to  send  Damianus  a 
Goes  a  copy,  that  he  intends  to  send  one  to  the  King  of  Scot- 
land, and  publish  it  under  his  auspices.3  But,  as  copies  of 
these  prefaces  do  not  seem  to  have  been  found  in  Spain  or 
Scotland,4  it  is  to  be  assumed  that  Pole  changed  his  mind. 

He  changed  his  mind  so  completely,  that  in  the  last  of 
these  three  prefaces,  the  letter  to  Edward  VI,  he  asserted, 
that  though  he  had  tried  to  force  himself  to  yield  to  the 
arguments  of  his  friends,  he  had  never  been  willing  to 
publish  his  book.  The  reasons  for  this  mental  struggle, 
which  we  perceive  when  we  thus  compare  the  contemporary 

1PoJi  Epistola,  III,  37. 

3  Apologia,  Section  vi,  "omnia  tune  scripta  quae  nunc  edo,"  ibid.,  I. 

*  Ibid.,  I,  175,  "In  lucem  exire  volo." 

*  The  Apologia  was  printed  by  Quirini  from  a  manuscript  found  in  Germany; 
frecfatio  ad  Monumenta  Prvlitninaria,  ibid.,  I. 


APPENDIX  385 

record  of  his  feelings  made  by  his  own  hand  with  his  subse- 
quent memories,  are  not  far  to  seek.  Any  one  who  will 
read  all  Pole's  writings  and  set  them  against  the  back- 
ground of  the  age  he  lived  in,  can  scarcely  fail  to  see  them. 
The  correspondence  of  Pole  was  printed  in  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  long  after  the  close  of  the  epoch 
of  wars  about  religion.  At  that  time  a  cardinal  who 
fomented  insurrection  against  a  legitimate  prince,  or  de- 
manded war  to  drive  him  from  his  throne  for  religious 
causes,  would  have  been  regarded  with  disfavor  by  most 
orthodox  churchmen  and,  under  many  popes,  would  have 
been  reproved  in  Rome  itself.  The  editor  therefore  shows 
in  his  notes  a  strong  desire  to  clear  Pole  from  the  imputa- 
tion of  having  been  a  rebel,  even  in  the  sense  of  those 
enemies  of  the  Church  who  had  condemned  him  for  treason. 
The  attempt  is  a  vain  one,  as  is  admitted  by  Pole's  best 
biographer,  Father  Zimmerman,1  who  points  out  that  Pole 
believed  the  English  people  had  the  right  to  depose  a  king 
but  not  a  bishop  or  a  pope.  But  this  anxiety  of  his  editor, 
writing  in  a  later  age  when  all  rebellion  was  apt  to  be  re- 
garded as  sin,  marks  only  the  ultimate  triumph  of  a  senti- 
ment which,  even  in  Pole's  day,  exercised  a  strong  influence 
on  human  action — the  sentiment  of  patriotism,  leading  men 
to  support,  against  every  interference  from  men  speaking 
other  tongues,  the  action  of  the  national  government  whose 
language  they  spoke.  That  sentiment,  though  not  yet  en- 
tirely prevalent  anywhere,  was  stronger  in  England  in 
the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  than  in  any  other  part 
of  the  European  world,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Spain. 
Pole  himself  had  formed  his  opinions  and  made  his  chief 
friendships  among  Italians,  where  the  patriotic  sentiment 

i  Athanasius  Zimmerman,  S.  J.,  Kardinal  Pole,  se.in  Leben  und  seine  Schrift- 
en,  Regensburg,  1893. 


386  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

was  so  extremely  weak,  that  the  destinies  of  Italy  were 
swayed,  down  to  our  own  generation,  by  foreign  force.  But 
there  are  plain  indications  that  he  had  conquered  it  in  his 
own  mind  only  with  pain,  and  we  may  well  believe  his  as- 
sertion that  he  wrote,  with  bitter  tears,1  the  book  that  made 
him  an  exile  and  a  public  enemy  to  England,  in  obedience 
to  a  conscience  which  bade  him  stand  by  the  highest  au- 
thority, established  by  God  at  Rome.  But  perhaps  the 
struggle  in  his  own  mind,  suggested  to  him  the  strength  of 
the  sentiment  he  was  opposing.  Therefore,  while  he  hoped 
at  times  for  insurrection  backed  by  the  sword  of  France, 
or  of  Spain,  or  of  both,2  he  shrank  from  appearing  before 
the  world  as  a  denouncer  of  war.  That  would  be  to  draw 
down  upon  himself  and  the  Church  a  renewal  of  the  old 
reproach,  most  sharply  expressed  in  Zwingli's  epigram,  that 
cardinals  were  appropriately  clothed  in  red;  their  robes 
were  stained  with  the  blood  they  had  caused  to  be  shed. 
In  saying  this  there  is  no  intention  of  charging  Pole  with 
any  extraordinary  craftiness  unexampled  among  his  con- 
temporaries. Pole,  devoted  to  the  institution  he  loved  more 
than  anything  else  in  the  world,  was  not  superior  to  the 
temptation  to  which  many  men  on  either  side  of  that  great 
controversy  whose  issue  was  a  war  for  life  and  death, 
yielded,  the  temptation  to  be — sometimes  without  being 
quite  conscious  of  it — less  than  frank,  if  the  cause  might 
be  helped  by  guile.  Martin  Luther,  in  the  case  of  the 
bigamous  marriage  of  the  landgrave  of  Hesse,  was  willing 
to  consent  secretly  to  what  he  would  not  publicly  approve, 
and  Pole  gave  and  shared  secret  counsels  expressing  hopes 
and  intentions  which  he  would  not  avow.  This  conclusion 
is  derived  from  many  instances  in  Pole's  writings,  even 

1  Epistola  ad  Edwardum  VI,  Section  xl,  Poll  Epistola,  IV. 
8  This   is  contrary  to  the  opinion   of  several   authoritative  writers,  but  the 
references  given  below  prove  it  beyond  doubt. 


APPENDIX  387 

stronger  in  the  sum  than  in  any  instance.  It  comes  per- 
haps to  its  most  acute  point  in  these  particular  passages. 

On  February  16,  1537,  he  wrote  to  the  royal  Council  of 
England  r1  "You  say  the  Pope  is  the  King's  enemy,  to  which 
I  reply  thus:  I  dare  to  affirm  of  this  Pope,  whose  acts  I 
see,  whose  talk  I  often  hear,  that  I  have  never  heard  of 
a  single  act  or  word  of  his,  either  concerning  the  King  or 
concerning  those  who  are  in  his  kingdom,  which  did  not 
show  the  affection  of  a  father,  and  that  indeed  the  most 
indulgent  father  toward  his  son,  or  the  affection  of  a  most 
loving  pastor  toward  his  flock."  This  solemn  assevera- 
tion was  written  on  the  eve  2  of  Pole's  departure  on  a  Papal 
mission  whose  object,  as  the  Pope  told  the  Spanish  ambas- 
sador, who  repeated  it  to  his  master,  was  to  aid  the  north- 
ern insurrection  in  England.3  Pole  must  of  course  have 
known  of  this  object  to  carry  it  out.  That  he  did  know 
of  it,  is  shown  positively  by  his  letters  to  the  Pope  on  start- 
ing from  Rome  and  on  returning.4 

Now  the  motives  that  caused  Pole  to  deny  plans  for 
promoting  insurrection  of  which  he  was  an  instrument, 
would  also  be  active  in  leading  him,  after  hesitation,  to  sup- 
press his  book.  For  that  book,  as  has  already  been  said, 
he  wrote  three  prefaces.  The  first,  entitled  the  Apologia, 
contains  the  famous  picture  of  Thomas  Cromwell.  In  style 
and  form  it  is  not  a  preface,  but  an  oration  about  two  and 
a  half  times  as  long  as  this  essay,  arranged  with  art  and 
most  rhetorically  written.  Section  viii  shows  that  it  was 
begun  after  the  launching  of  the  papal  bull  which  com- 
manded all  faithful  Christians  to  deprive  Henry  of  his 

1  Poli   Epistolte,    I,    185.      Everything    included   in    Pole's    Epistles   is   either 
Latin  or  Italian.     The  passages  are  Englished  by  the  writer. 
3  Although  unwell,  he  was  at  Bologna  on   February  28,   1537. 

*  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry   VIII,  XII,    Part  I,  No.   123,  confirmed  by 
Ibid.,  Nos.  463,  625,  1141. 

*  Pali  Epistola;,  II,  cclxxiv,  46. 


388  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

crown,  and  either  just  before,  or  during,  Pole's  journey  to 
Spain  on  a  mission  to  Charles  V,  begun  December  27,  1538. 
A  passage  about  the  middle  of  the  Apologia  shows,  how- 
ever, that  it  could  not  have  been  finished  at  that  time;  for 
the  writer  speaks  of  having  seen,  "per  hos  dies,"  the 
book  which  set  forth  the  reasons  the  English  Council  gave 
for  the  attainder  or  execution  of  three  members  of  Pole's 
family.1 

That  book  was  not  ready  for  distribution  on  January 
9,  I539,2  and  what  must  have  been  one  of  the  first  copies 
distributed,  was  sent  to  France  by  the  French  ambassador 
on  January  i6.2  Pole  could  not  therefore  have  seen  the 
book  before  he  passed  through  south  France.  (He  was  at 
Avingnon  January  22.)  It  is  not  probable  that  he  saw  it 
then,  for  that  supposition  implies  that  he  was  writing  dur- 
ing the  rapid  journey 8  to  Toledo,  which  he  reached  on 
February  13.  It  is  most  probable,  that  after  returning  from 
Toledo,  some  time  between  the  end  of  March  and  the  end 
of  September,  1539,  he  took  up  and  finished  the  Apologia, 
which  he  certainly  began  when  he  was  looking  forward  to 
seeing  the  Emperor  as  the  representative  of  the  Pope.  It 
was  written  under  great  disappointment,  for  Pole  had 
hoped  that  Henry  would  be  forced  back  to  the  Church  by 
the  insurrection  of  the  North  and  the  invasion,  which,  as 
he  had  served  notice  in  the  manuscript  of  the  Pro  Unitatis 
Defensione,  he  would  invoke,  if  the  King  did  not  yield  to  his 
prophetic  denunciations  of  sin  and  exhortations  to  repent- 
ance. 

He  had  now  come  to  believe  that  his  hopes  of  frighten- 

1  An  invective  agenste  the  great  and  detestible  vice  of  treason  wherein  the 
secret  practices  and  traitorous  workings  of  them  that  suffered  of  late  are  dis- 
closed, London,  1539. 

1  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  Vlll,  XIV,  Part  I,  Nos.  37,  72. 

•Ibid.,   No.   126. 


APPENDIX  389 

ing  and  persuading  Henry  to  repent  and  return  to  the  Church, 
had  been  blocked  first  by  the  devil,  and  second,  by  an  emis- 
sary of  the  devil,  Thomas  Cromwell.  He  might  well  have 
hated  and  attacked  Cromwell  bitterly  on  personal  grounds, 
for  Cromwell  had  been  the  chief  agent  in  executing  his 
brother,  Lord  Montague,  and  condemning  his  mother,  the 
countess  of  Salisbury,  for  treason.  But  it  is  not  to  be 
assumed  that  the  Apologia  was  written  out  of  personal  re- 
venge. Its  motive  is  a  burning  zeal  to  speak,  as  the  ex- 
ponent of  God's  justice,  in  denouncing  the  enemies  of  hu- 
manity and  religion.1  For  Pole  now  saw  plainly,  what  was 
the  undoubted  fact,  that  this  man  was  the  chief  influence 
in  frustrating  the  sacred  hopes  with  which  he  had  sailed  on 
his  mission  (1537)  to  aid  the  English  rebellion  in  defense 
of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  on  his  other  mission  to  induce 
the  Emperor  to  force  Henry  back  to  obedience  to  the  Vicar 
of  Christ,  which  had  just  proved  a  failure.  Pole,  therefore, 
joins  Cromwell  to  Henry  as  the  object  of  invective  in  the 
name  of  God  and  the  Church. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  historic  value  of  this  document, 
as  a  chief  source  for  gaining  a  true  impression  of  the  work 
and  character  of  Thomas  Cromwell.  In  the  first  place,  it 
must  be  noted  that  Cromwell  was  a  man  whose  character 
and  motives  Pole  could  have  appreciated,  even  under  cir- 
cumstances the  most  favorable  to  fair  judgment,  only  im- 
perfectly. Two  more  antipathetic  personages  could  hardly 
be  imagined.  Pole  was  a  man  of  the  highest  aristocratic 
lineage.  Cromwell,  as  Pole  is  careful  to  point  out,  had 
risen  from  the  common  people.  Cromwell's  intelligence 
was  a  product  of  the  Renascence  training.  Pole,  though 
a  correspondent  of  Erasmus  and  a  friend  of  Bembo,  was  al- 

1  That  the  Apologia  was  not  written  merely  as  a  private  letter  to  the  emperor 
is  shown  by  its  whole  tone  and  by  the  end  of  Section  viii:  "Necessarium  si 
cupimus  multitudini  prodesse  hoc  prius  ostendere." 


390  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

ways  too  much  of  a  theologian  of  the  old  type  to  be  really 
a  man  of  the  New  Learning.1  Cromwell  expelled  scholasti- 
cism from  Oxford  and  made  provision  for  the  effective  teach- 
ing of  Greek.2  When  Pole  became  the  first  subject  in  Eng- 
land, he  deplored  the  cessation  of  scholastic  learning  and 
changed  the  lectureship  in  Hebrew  to  one  on  the  Master 
of  the  Sentences.3  Pole  was  a  believer  in  the  old  ideal 
liberties  of  a  semi-feudal  commonwealth  defended  by  the 
two  privileged  classes  of  nobles  and  clergy.4  Cromwell  was 
a  man  of  an  era  to  come,  who  had  been  a  chief  instrument 
in  the  policy  of  ruthlessly  smashing  the  remanent  power  of 
feudalism,  breaking  the  political  influence  of  the  lay 
lords,  destroying  that  of  the  ecclesiastical  hierarchy,  and 
making  England  a  nation  centered  around  an  absolute  throne 
resting  on  the  consent  of  the  middle  classes.5 

Pole  belonged  to  an  era  that  was  past.  Cromwell  was 
destroying  that  ancient  divine  institution  for  which  Pole 
had  sacrificed  everything  in  the  world.  To  look  for  a  judi- 
cious estimate  of  the  character  and  aims  of  Abraham  Lin- 
coln in  a  letter  of  Jefferson  Davis,  written,  in  the  midst  of 
the  Civil  War,  to  gain  the  recognition  of  the  Confederacy 
from  some  foreign  government,  would  be  far  wiser  than 
to  approach  without  caution  the  Apologia  which  Pole  ad- 
dressed to  Charles  V.  The  expectation  of  finding  in  it  a  fair 
and  final  judgment  on  Thomas  Cromwell  is  unreasonable. 

1  See  his  correspondence  with   Sadolct. 

8  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  IX,  Nos.  312,  350. 

*Poli  Epistola,  V.  47,  84. 

4  Thomas  Starkey,  Dialogue  between  Pole  and  Lupset,  in  England  in  the 
Reign  of  King  Henry  VIII,  edited  by  J.  M.  Cowper  for  The  Early  English 
Text  Society,  London,  1871.  This  is  probably  in  accord  with  the  general  drift 
of  Pole's  views,  and  it  agrees  with  the  political  allusions  of  his  letters. 

B  The  Tudors  had  no  standing  army.  They  destroyed  the  power  of  the 
nobility  and  clergy.  By  repeated  legislation  Henry  VIII  tried  to  make  the 
people  keep  and  practise  arms.  If  his  throne  was  not  in  the  last  analysis  sup- 
ported by  the  loyalty  of  the  middle  classes,  what  kept  it  from  falling  under  the 
repeated  attacks  made  upon  it? 


APPENDIX  391 

And  this  necessary  caution  is  increased  when  we  understand 
the  purpose  and  feel  the  tone  of  the  Apologia. 

Pole's  correspondence  is  not  a  common  book,  and  the 
calendar  of  the  Apologia  to  Charles  V,  printed  in  the  Letters 
and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  is  so  condensed  that  it  gives  no 
hint  of  the  violent  polemic  tone  of  the  writing.  Nor  does 
the  description  of  Zimmerman  enable  the  reader  to  form 
any  idea  of  it.  A  few  extracts  from  more  characteristic  * 
passages  will  suggest  how  little  the  historic,  and  how 
entirely  the  polemic,  spirit  ruled  the  mind  of  its  author 
when  it  poured  from  his  indignant  soul  against  the  enemies 
of  God  and  His  Church.  The  molder  of  the  German  tongue 
could  never  have  forced  his  diction,  virile  to  coarseness,  into 
the  artificial  rhetoric  of  Pole's  sixteenth-century  Ciceronian, 
but  not  Martin  Luther  himself  could  write  a  polemic,  which 
in  effect,  was  more  violent  that  the  Apologia.  The  object 
of  the  treatise  is  to  show  that  Henry  is  Antichrist,  confirmed 
in  his  subjection  to  Satan  by  Cromwell,  Satan's  emissary, 
and  its  rhetorical  climax  is  an  appeal  to  the  faithful  for  a 
holy  war  to  free  the  world  of  his  tyranny  and  impiety.  Did 
Moses,  Pole  asks,  have  a  juster  reason  for  calling  upon  the 
Israelites  to  wipe  out  the  crime  of  the  worshipers  of  the 
golden  calf  even  in  the  blood  of  brethren  and  friends,  than 
the  Vicar  of  Christ  has  to  call  to  all  the  pious,  in  view  of  the" 
worse  crimes  of  Henry,  Who  is  on  the  Lord's  side  let  him 
gird  his  sword  on  his  thigh?  If  it  was  said  to  the  tribe  of 
Levi,  Blessed  are  ye  of  the  Lord,  ye  who  have  consecrated 
your  hands  in  the  blood  of  your  relatives,  how  much  greater 
blessing  will  they  deserve,  who,  at  the  call  of  the  Vicar  of 

1  The  Apologia  contains  passages  expressing  the  great  sorrow  it  gives  Pole 
to  be  compelled  to  denounce  Henry.  Such  expressions  are  usual  in  the  most 
comminatory  writings  of  popes,  cardinals,  or  bishops.  But  they  are  not  charac- 
teristic of  the  Apologia.  It  is  more  denunciatory  than  that  third  book  of  the 
Pro  Unitatis  Defensione,  which  Pole  himself  said  was  written  "acerbe  et  vehe- 
mcnter,"  "aspere."  Regretful  expressions  are  not  applied  to  Cromwell  at  alL 


392  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

God,  consecrate  their  hands  in-  the  blood  of  those  who  have 
inflicted  such  slaughter  joined  with  ignominy  on  the  people 
of  God?  "Can  it  be,  the  chiefs  of  the  tribes  of  the  people 
of  God,  to  whom  I,  one  of  those  Levites,  am  sent  to  hold  up 
that  glorious  and  most  pious  example  of  the  tribe  of  Levi," 
will  fail  to  listen  to  me? 

Henry  is  the  vicar  of  the  devil.  Henry  is  worse  than 
Nero,  crueler  than  the  Turk.  "Unless  Christian  princes  and 
peoples  unite  against  him,  God  will  give  them  no  victory 
over  the  Turk."  Strengthened  by  God's  justice  to  the 
office  of  a  prophet,  Pole  announces  that,  if  they  neglect  this 
worst  enemy  of  God,  "He  will  not  only  not  roll  back  the 
Turkish  charge,  but  will  make  it  prevail  in  the  day  of  battle." 

Henry  has  expressed  the  very  form  of  the  rule  of  Anti- 
christ foretold  in  Scripture,  as  it  has  never  been  expressed 
before.  Pole  would  gladly  give  his  body  to  be  burned  to 
save  him,  but  the  king  is  so  lost  that  his  conversion  would 
be  a  miracle  never  before  heard  of,  "that  one  not  four  days 
dead,  but  long  dead,  should  be  restored  to  life,  and,  from  that 
hell  into  which  he  descended,  brought  back  living  to  the 
upper  regions."  An  emissary  of  Satan  had  confirmed  Henry 
in  evil,  and  led  him  to  set  himself  up  in  the  place  of  God. 
His  real  name  was  that  of  the  demon  by  whose  impulse  he 
worked.  But  if  we  begin  with  that  human  name  he  received 
from  his  family,  before  "he  fell  into  the  hands  of  devils  and 
degenerated  into  their  nature,"  we  find  it  to  be  Cromwell. 
A  man  of  no  lineage,  whose  father,  they  say,  earned  his 
living  in  a  little  village  by  fulling  cloth,  he  was  like  the 
man  in  the  tombs  possessed  by  a  legion  of  devils — nay 
worse ;  "For  if  a  legion  of  devils  drove  a  herd  of  swine  into 
the  sea,  how  many  legions,  or  rather  how  many  armies  of 
devils,  must  be  in  this  Cromwell  who  has  thrust  such  vast 
numbers  of  men  down  to  hell?"  No  heretic,  no  schismatic 


APPENDIX  393 

has  ever  been  so  bad  as  Cromwell.  They  had  cast  crowds 
of  men  into  the  sea  of  death.  But  Cromwell  had  gone  far- 
ther and  destroyed  the  very  foundation  of  righteousness, 
committing  the  sin  for  which  Lucifer  was  cast  into  the 
abyss,  the  assertion  that  the  norm  of  right  and  wrong  is 
man's  own  will.  Pole  says  that  he  is  not  talking  mystically 
but  in  a  common-sense  way.  He  can  prove  what  the  com- 
mands of  Satan  brought  by  Cromwell  to  the  King,  were. 

The  greater  part  of  his  proof  is  as  follows :  He  had  had 
only  one  conversation  with  Cromwell,1  and  that  was  ten 
years  before,  soon  after  his  own  return  from  Italy  (1528), 
when  Cromwell  was  a  "sycophant"  of  Wolsey's.  Cromwell 
was  trying,  as  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  tried,  to  persuade  Pole 
(see  Pole's  letter  to  Edward  VI)  not  to  oppose  the  King. 
The  keen  man  of  the  world  doubtless  told  the  young  student 
of  the  cloisters  things  about  kings'  courts  and  the  sort  of 
arguments  to  use  at  them,  which  were  true  enough.  And 
Pole  did  not  know  them,  or  else  he  would  not  have  thought 
it  possible  to  frighten  Henry  by  the  Pro  Unitatis  Defensione 
or  raise  a  crusade  against  him  by  the  Apologia.  More,  in  the 
Utopia,  made  to  Raphael  some  excellent  remarks  about  not 
being  a  philosopher  in  the  councils  of  princes,  which  might 
easily  have  been  distorted  by  an  enemy  who  repeated  them 
after  the  lapse  of  ten  years.  And  we  may  well  believe 
that  there  was  more  cynical  worldly  wisdom  than  piety  in 
Cromwell's  talk,  without  turning  his  advice  into  that  sys- 
tematic attack  upon  the  very  foundations  of  morality  which 
Pole  says  it  was,  as  his  judgment  of  Cromwell's  devilish 

*Pole  says  (Apologia,  132),  "hoc  fateor,  me  publice  autem  ilium  loquentum 
nunquam  audivisse,  privatim  autem  semel  et  iterum,  nunquam  amplius."  This, 
as  it  stands,  means  twice.  But  a  few  lines  farther  down  on  the  same  page  Pole 
contradicts  it  by  saying  "facile  ex  illo  uno  congressu  et  colloquio  perspiciebam" ; 
and  in  the  next  line,  "Talem  enim  futuram  ille  uno  sermone  docuit."  The  only 
explanation  I  can  suggest  is  to  drop  the  editor's  comma  after  iterum  and  take 
the  phrase  iterum  nunquam  amplius  as  loose  Latin  for  "never  again."  The 
Apologia  needs  the  file  in  many  places,  as  its  editor  Quirini  remarks. 


394  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

work  molded,  across  the  lapse  of  years,  his  memories  of  a 
single  talk.  And  we  may  easily  believe  that,  in  rejecting  the 
temptation  to  justify  the  cruel  injustice  of  Henry's  divorce, 
Pole  chose  the  better  part,  without  seeing  Cromwell  as  the 
diabolic  personage  Pole  makes  him  appear  in  this  trumpet- 
call  to  sacred  war  against  him. 

Pole  says,  that  at  the  end  of  the  conversation,  Cromwell 
offered  to  lend  him  a  book  on  statecraft  if  he  would  read  it. 
It  is  expressly  stated  that  Cromwell  did  not  mention  its 
name  or  send  it.  But  Pole  "took  no  less  care  to  get  it,  by 
inquiring  from  those  who  knew  the  bent  of  his  studies,  than 
men  take  to  intercept  the  despatches  of  a  hostile  general  to 
know  his  plans."  After  these  inquiries,  Pole  concluded  that 
the  book  Cromwell  had  offered  to  lend  him  was  the  Prince 
of  Machiavelli ;  and,  as  soon  as  he  began  to  read  it,  he  per- 
ceived that  "though  a  man's  name  was  on  the  title-page,  the 
book  was  written  by  the  finger  of  Satan  even  as  the  Holy 
Scriptures  are  said  to  be  written  by  the  finger  of  God."  And 
this  fact,  that  Cromwell  once  offered  to  lend  him  a  book  that 
had  just  appeared,  and  that  he  "afterward"  found  out  that 
Cromwell  read  and  approved  Machiavelli's  Prince,  is  Pole's 
proof  that  Cromwell,  possessed  of  an  army  of  devils,  is  an 
emissary  of  Satan  to  the  King.  Then  he  proceeds  to  tell 
also  how  Cromwell  accomplished  his  mission  from  Satan. 

Pole  heard  it  from  one  who  was  present,  that,  on  a  certain 
occasion,  the  King,  with  a  great  sigh,  said  that,  if  he  had 
known  how  difficult  the  divorce  was,  he  would  never  have 
begun  it.  From  this  mood  of  hesitancy  he  was  brought  by 
Cromwell ;  and  Pole  gives  a  long  speech  of  over  1,500  words 
made  by  Cromwell  to  the  king.  Pole  says  that  he  does  not 
know  that  he  has  the  order  of  this  speech  correct,  for  he 
was  not  present ;  but  he  can  affirm  that  there  is  in  it  nothing 
which  he  has  not  heard,  either  from  the  speaker  himself  or 


APPENDIX  395 

from  those  who  were  the  sharers  of  his  counsel.  Now  when 
we  remember  that  ten  years  had  elapsed  since  the  speech 
which  Pole  did  not  hear  was  supposed  to  be  delivered,  when 
we  notice  that  he  never  referred  to  either  conversation  or 
speech  in  his  writings  during  the  interval,  and  perceive 
the  unmistakable  traces  of  Pole's  reading  of  Machiavelli 
all  through  his  version  of  Cromwell's  supposed  speech  to 
the  King,  the  conclusion  seems  inevitable,  that  it  was  largely 
constructed  under  the  predominant  influence  of  Pole's  con- 
viction that  the  diabolic  activity  of  Henry's  government, 
could  best  be  accounted  for  by  the  belief  that  its  chief 
councilor  was  the  first  man  to  introduce  into  English  state- 
craft the  principles  of  that  Satan's  Bible,  //  Principe. 

The  reasons  which  Pole  alleges  for  seeking  some  direct 
diabolic  influence  to  account  for  Henry's  conduct,  should  first 
be  noticed.  Pole  was  in  no  mood  to  recall  the  evils  con- 
nected with  the  veneration  of  relics  and  pilgrimages,  an- 
imadverted upon  for  more  than  a  generation  past  by  both 
schismatics  and  those  who  stood  by  the  orthodox  church.  And 
to  him,  the  wickedest  things  ever  done  by  any  tyrant  in  the 
history  of  the  world,  were  the  destruction  of  the  shrine  of 
Saint  Thomas  a  Becket  and  the  dishonoring  of  his  bones, 
and  the  destruction  of  the  tomb  of  Saint  Augustine.1  To 
one  who  shares  this  opinion,  it  may  perhaps  appear  that  the 
government  of  England  under  Cromwell's  influence,  was  so 
uniquely  and  diabolically  wicked  that  we  must  assume  for  it 
some  peculiar  relation  to  principles  explicitly  denying  all  the 
foundations  of  right  and  wrong.  To  one  who  does  not 
share  this  view  of  the  unexampled  atrocity  of  the  destruc- 
tion of  a  saint's  shrines  and  the  brutal  treatment  of  relics, 
the  assumption  that  the  government  of  England  between 

1  These  were  deeds  "qua  nullus  unquam  apostata  tentavit  unquam  nullus 
hereticus  est  conatus,"  ibid.,  110. 


396  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

1531  and  1538,  so  incomparably  exceeded,  in  craft  or  cruelty 
or  despotism,  the  reigns  of  Henry's  contemporaries,  men  like 
Ferdinand  of  Spain,  Charles  V,  Pope  Clement  VII,  or 
Francis  I,  that  it  must  of  necessity  have  been  guided  by 
some  uniquely  immoral  principles,  is  scarcely  worthy  of 
serious  discussion. 

Moreover,  if  Cromwell  had  owned  a  manuscript  of  the 
Prince  in  1528 — and,  as  we  shall  see,  there  is  very  strong 
reason  for  believing  that  he  did  not  see  the  Prince  until  ten 
years  later — there  would  have  been  nothing  especially  sig- 
nificant about  that  fact.  The  Prince  was  first  printed  in 
1532,  at  Rome,  by  the  same  printer  who  printed  Pole's  book, 
and  under  the  favor  and  sanction  of  the  Pope,1  who  granted 
him  a  ten-years'  copyright.  It  was  then  considered  a  per- 
fectly proper  book  for  a  pious  man  to  own.  By  1554,  some 
dozen  editions  had  appeared,  and  the  book  was  read  by 
every  one  who  read  widely  in  politics  at  all.  Sir  Thomas 
Smith,  a  younger  contemporary  of  Cromwell,  and  one  of 
the  fairest  statesmen  of  his  times,  had  it  in  his  library  of 
history  and  politics,  of  which  a  catalogue  has  survived.  The 
possession  of  the  Prince,  between  1528  and  1540,  would  sug- 
gest no  presumption  whatever  that  its  owner  was  a  singu- 
larly sinister  personage ;  "it  is  known  that  Charles  V," 
for  whom  Pole  wrote  the  Apologia,  "carefully  studied  it, 
that  his  son  and  courtiers  perused  it/'2 

That  Cromwell  became,  as  Pole  says,  Henry's  chief  coun- 
selor in  the  process  of  breaking  allegiance  to  Rome,  de- 
stroying the  political  power  of  the  clergy,  and  suppressing 
the  monasteries,  is  true  enough.  In  carrying  out  this  plan, 

1  See  G.  Amico,  La  Vita  di  N.  Machiavelli,  Florence,  1875,  415. 

2  Pasquale  Villari,  Niccold  Machiavelli,  Milan,  1895-1897,  Volume  II,  I<ibro 
Secondo,  Cap.  v,  421,  chapter  on  the  critics  of  the  Prince. 

L.  Alberti  Ferrai  makes  a  similar  assertion  in  his  essay  on  Francesco  I  e 
Carlo  V  in  La  Vita  Italiana  nel  Ciuquecento.  Milano,  seconda  edizione,  1897, 
page  7. 


APPENDIX  397 

he  used  the  ruthless  and  crafty  methods  common  to  the 
politics  of  the  century ;  the  condition  of  his  power  was  will- 
ingness to  serve  the  caprices  of  a  despot  whose  morbid  con- 
science gave  to  his  evil  deeds  a  singular  stamp,  which  has 
thrown  them  into  high  relief  among  the  many  tyrannical 
acts  of  the  age.  But  that  Cromwell  owed  his  policy  or 
methods  to  the  teachings  of  Machiavelli,  is  in  itself  highly 
improbable.  Machiavelli  did  not  create,  he  only  interpreted 
the  political  methods  of  his  age.  Pole's  direct  proof  that 
Cromwell  was  an  emissary  of  the  devil,  is,  to  any  one  who 
knows  that  generation  of  the  sixteenth  century,  entirely 
valueless.  And  it  must  be  remembered  that  he  himself, 
presumably  with  the  advice  of  his  friends,  never  gave  the 
Apologia  to  the  emperor,  for  whom  he  wrote  it,  nor  to  the 
world. 

In  addition  to  these  considerations,  there  are  the  following 
detailed  reasons  to  show  that  Pole's  account  of  Cromwell  as 
the  messenger  of  Satan,  drawing  his  policy  from  Satan's 
Bible,  is  untrustworthy :  First  we  should  observe  that  Pole, 
like  most  men,  was  capable  of  making  mistakes  in  repre- 
senting long  afterward  what  he  had  felt  at  a  certain  time, 
and,  in  regard  to  small  things,  in  relating  what  he  had 
done.  For  example,  the  letter  to  Edward  VI  (1547-1553), 
denying  the  charge  that  he  had  undertaken  his  mission  in 
1539  to  induce  kings  to  take  arms  against  Henry,  asserts 
that  he  merely  intended  to  persuade  the  Emperor  and  the 
French  King  to  use  the  reasoning  of  love  and  friendship  with 
Henry.  He  never  wished  that  they  should  attack  him  by 
force  of  arms.  He  says  he  will  not  deny  that  he  advised, 
in  case  love  and  kindness  failed,  that  threats  should  be 
added,  and  that  as  a  last  extreme  remedy  they  should  de- 
clare a  commercial  blockade.1  Now  this  does  not  necessarily 

lEpistola  ad  Edwardum  VI,  xlv,  Poli  Epistola,  IV. 


398  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

involve  any  conscious  misrepresentation  of  facts.  But  we 
may  confidently  affirm  that  it  is,  in  effect,  an  entire  misstate- 
ment.  Pole  was  directed  by  the  Pope  to  carry  the  bull  of 
excommunication  to  Charles  and  ask  his  aid  in  its  execu- 
tion, so  far  at  least  as  by  recalling  his  ambassadors  and  for- 
bidding all  trade  with  England.1  This  of  course  was  only 
an  indirect  way  of  using  force,  because  we  know  from  Pole's 
secretary  that  it  was  hoped  by  cutting  England  from  all 
communication  with  Christendom,  to  cause'  such  misery  that 
the  people  would  rise  in  rebellion  against  Henry.2  But  this 
consideration  by  no  means  measures  the  error  of  Pole's 
recollection.  Section  viii  of  the  Apologia  shows  that  the 
account  Pole  gave  after  1547  of  his  motives  and  feelings  in 
1539,  is  explicitly  contrary  to  fact.  That  section,  written 
when  he  was  about  to  undertake  his  mission,  but  not  pub- 
lished until  two  hundred  years  afterward,  plainly  states 
that  the  motive  of  his  mission,  is  to  persuade  the  Emperor 
to  postpone  the  Turkish  war  and  turn  his  arms  against 
England.  Moreover  we  know  that  this  is  what  Pole  tried 
to  persuade  the  Emperor  to  do ;  for  the  following  despatch 
of  Mocenigo,  the  Venetian  ambassador,  records  the  account 
the  Emperor  gave,  soon  after  Pole  left  him,  of  his  interview 
with  Pole :— 3 

"On  the  one  hand  it  seems  that  the  Cardinal  wishes  me 
to  forbid  trade  with  this  King  of  England  as  a  sort  of  warn- 
ing, on  the  other  hand  he  appears  to  want  me  to  make  war  on 
him :  my  answer  is  that  I  know  full  well  what  war  means 
— that  it  is  easy  to  begin  and  not  so  easy  to  end :  *  *  * 
if  His  Holiness  is  counselling  such  enterprises,  it  is  because 

1  Pope  Paul  III  to  Charles  V,  January  7,  1540,  Calendar  of  State  Papers, 
Spanish.  VI,  Part  I,  97. 

1  Beccatelli's  Life  of  Pole,  17,  in  Poli  Epistola,  I.  Beccatelli  was  Pole's 
secretary  and  intimate  companion. 

*  Quoted  and  summarized  in  The  Emperor  Charles  V ,  by  Edward  Armstrong, 
M.  A.  (Macmillan,  1902),  II.  21. 


APPENDIX  399 

he  is  far  distant  from  the  said  King;  were  he  as  near  him 
as  I  am,  his  advice  might  be  different." 

Charles  reminded  Pole  that  at  Nice  the  Pope  had  im- 
pressed upon  him  that  the  crusade  was  so  important  that 
all  other  enterprises  must  be  postponed  for  this ;  he  could 
not  imagine  why  His  Holiness  had  changed  his  mind.  Pole 
urged  that  the  English  evil  was  intrinsic,  the  Turkish  ex- 
trinsic,1 and  demanded  that  the  intrinsic  danger  should  re- 
ceive the  first  attention.  "But,"  replied  the  emperor,  "if 
the  Turk  came  to  Italy  and  right  up  to  Ancona,  as  come  he 
undoubtedly  would,  would  His  Holiness  regard  that  as  an 
extrinsic  evil?"  Thus  the  Emperor's  account  of  what  Pole 
said  on  his  mission,  agrees  entirely  with  Pole's  own  record 
in  the  Apologia  of  his  feelings  just  before  and  after  that 
mission,  and  shows  that  Pole's  account  of  that  mission  writ- 
ten years  afterward  to  Edward  VI,  was  so  incomplete  as 
to  be  entirely  misleading. 

It  may  also  be  shown  in  the  same  connection,  that  Pole 
is  capable,  as  most  men  are,  not  only  of  making  mistakes 
as  to  the  main  meaning  of  what  he  felt  and  said  in  time 
past,  but  also  capable  of  making  mistakes  in  telling  what  he 
did  long  ago.  He  writes,  in  the  Epistola  ad  Edwardum  VI, 
that  when  his  friends  printed  his  Pro  Ecclesiastics  Unitatis 
Defensione  without  his  consent,  during  his  absence  from 
Rome  in  1539,  they  arranged  it  in  several  books,  "which  I 
never  had  done."2  But  in  the  first  part  of  the  Apologia, 
composed  on  the  eve  of  that  absence,  as  the  eighth  section 
shows  beyond  question,  he  writes,  "I  have  divided  the  work 
into  four  books,"  and  he  then  describes  them  one  by  one. 

1  The  fatuousness  of  this  argument,  exposed  by  the  humorous  reply  of  the 
Emperor,  is  one  of  several  indications  that  might  be  adduced  to  show  how  much 
Pole  needed  Cromwell's  advice  not  to  indulge  in  scholastic  discussion  at  princes' 
councils. 

a  Epistola  ad  Edwardum  VI,   Section  xlviii,  Poli  Epistola,  IV. 


400  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Now,  if  Pole's  memories  about  his  feelings  and  acts  were 
thus  obscured  and  confused1  in  the  interval  between  the 
writing  of  the  Apologia  (1539)  and  the  Epistola  (reign  of 
Edward  VI,  1547-1553),  it  is  evident  that  his  memories 
about  his  feelings  and  acts  as  regards  Cromwell,  might  be- 
come confused  in  the  interval  between  1528  and  1539.  That 
they  did  so  become  confused,  is  plainly  shown  by  what  he 
wrote  in  this  interval.  It  is  impossible  to  compare  carefully 
the  Apologia  with  the  Pro  Unitatis  Defensione  and  Pole's 
letters  between  1532  and  1539,  without  a  suspicion,  rising 
almost  to  certainty,  that,  in  this  elaborate  rhetorical  invective 
against  Cromwell,  he  is  telescoping,  in  a  very  misleading  way, 
events  long  separated.  In  order  to  prove  that  Cromwell  is 
a  devil  ("degeneravit  in  naturam  daemonum"),  Pole  tells 
the  Emperor  that  long  ago  he  had  a  talk  with  Cromwell 
about  the  duty  of  a  prudent  counselor  with  his  prince.  At 
the  end  of  it  Cromwell  offered  to  lend  him  a  book  on  the 
subject  written  by  a  certain  acute  modern  of  experience. 
The  subject  of  the  conversation  and  the  offer  to  lend  him 
the  book,  are  facts  that  would  be  apt  to  remain  in  a  man's 
mind.  There  is  not  the  smallest  reason  to  accuse  Pole  of 
inventing  them. 

There  are,  however,  very  strong  reasons  for  doubting  that 
the  unnamed  book  which  Cromwell  offered  to  lend  Pole, 
was  Machiavelli's  Prince.  But  does  not  Pole  say  that  Crom- 
well offered  to  lend  him  Machiavelli's  Prince"?  He  says 
nothing  of  the  kind.  Cromwell  offered  to  lend  him  a  book 
which  he  did  not  name  or  send.  But  "afterward"  Pole 

1  The  suggestion  which  Pole's  editor,  Quirini,  seems  to  imply  (Monuments 
Praliminaria,  ibid.,  I,  Ixxxvii)  does  not  stand  examination.  If  it  did,  it  would 
free  Pole  from  this  mistake  in  memory  only  by  involving  him  in  another.  Even 
taking  Quirini's  improbable  suggestion,  Pole's  own  writings  show  that  he  was 
mistaken  either  in  the  statement  that  he  had  never  divided  his  treatise  into  four 
books  or  in  the  statement  that  he  could  never  write  a  preface  for  the  published 
work. 


APPENDIX  401 

found  out  from  Cromwell's  friends  that  Cromwell  admired 
Machiavelli's  Prince,  and  he  concluded  that  it  was  the  book 
Cromwell  had  so  much  praised.  How  long  "afterward"? 
There  are  the  very  strongest  reasons  for  believing  that  it 
was  not  before  1537,  conjectural  reasons  for  believing  that 
it  was  during  1 538 ;  or  some  ten  years  after  the  conversation 
took  place. 

Before  examining  these  reasons,  let  us  notice  the  very 
good  ground  for  believing  that  the  unnamed  book  which 
Cromwell  offered  to  lend  Pole  in  1528  or  1529,  was  not  the 
Prince  of  Machiavelli  at  all,  but  the  Courier  of  Castiglione. 
(i)  The  Prince  was  not  printed  in  1529;  the  first  edition 
was  of  May,  1532.  This  does  not,  as  some  writers  have 
thought,  render  it  impossible1  for  Cromwell  to  have  had 
it,  but  it  makes  it  improbable.  Manuscripts  of  the  Prince 
existed,  but  they  were  not  very  plentiful.  (2)  There  is 
strong  positive  reason  (to  be  afterward  given)  to  believe 
that  Cromwell  did  not  see  the  Prince  until  long  afterward, 
when  a  friend  sent  him  a  copy.  (3)  The  Courtier,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  printed  in  April,  1528,  and  was  most  widely 
read.  In  ten  years  it  was  published  in  seventeen  editions 
and  translated  into  Spanish  and  French.  (4)  We  know  that 
Cromwell  had  a  copy,  from  the  following  letter  written  to 
him,  in  the  summer  of  1530,  by  Edward  Bonner,  afterward 
bishop  of  London: 

Right  worshipfull,  in  my  veray  hartiest  maner  I  com- 
mende  me  to  you.  And  wher  ye  willing  to  make  me  a  good 
Ytalion  promised  unto  me,  longe  agon,  the  Triumphes  of 
Petrarche  in  the  Ytalion  tonge.  I  hartely  pray  you  at  this 
tyme  by  his  beyrer,  Mr.  Augustine  his  seruant,  to  sende 
me  the  said  Boke  with  some  other  at  your  deuotion;  and 

1  It  appears  from  the  correspondence  of  Pietro  Aretino  that  MSS.  circulated 
in  Italy  in  1530  and  copyists  were  still  employed. 


402  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

especially,  if  it  please  you,  the  boke  called  Cortigiano  in 
Ytalion,  etc.1 

'(5)  The  Prince  has  nothing  whatever  to  say  about  the 
subject  on  which  Cromwell  was  talking  to  Pole — the  atti- 
tude of  a  prudent  counselor  toward  his  prince.  Pole's  recol- 
lections of  this  long-past  conversation  are  not  to  be  as- 
sumed as  reliable  in  detail.  He  would  not  write  it  down, 
for  in  1528  Cromwell  was  a  man  of  no  importance.  But 
he  would  probably  remember  the  subject  and  the  general 
drift  of  the  talk.  This  is  his  recollection : — 

Pole  said  in  opening,  "In  my  judgment  this  belongs  to 
the  duty  of  a  counselor,  not  to  dissent  from  those  honest  and 
useful  things  which  natural  law  and  the  writings  of  pious 
and  learned  men  teach."  Cromwell  replied  that  scholastic 
discussion  differs  from  a  king's  council ;  that  much  depends 
on  when,  where,  to  whom,  and  by  whom  a  thing  is  said ;  and 
that  it  is  the  part  of  a  prudent  and  experienced  man  to 
know  this.  In  this  matter  the  learned,  who  lack  experience, 
often  make  mistakes,  and,  because  of  their  abruptness,  cause 
the  hatred  of  princes,  because  they  do  not  know  how  to 
accommodate  themselves  and  their  remarks  to  place,  time, 
and  person.  Hence,  those  who  come  fresh  from  schools  to 
princely  councils,  for  lack  of  experience,  often  run  on  this 
rock ;  which  he  confirmed  with  some  examples  of  those 
who,  because  they  held  too  firmly  to  scholastic  opinions,  were 
hated  by  princes,  and  were,  not  only  useless,  but  actually  per- 
nicious, as  counselors.  Hence  he  summed  up  his  opinion 
about  the  duty  of  a  prudent  counselor  that  the  first  part 
of  it  is  to  study  the  will  of  his  prince.2 

(6)     The   Courtier  is   written   about   the   character   of 
princes'    friends   and   the   relation   of   counselors   to   their 

•  Sir  Henry  Ellis,  Original  Letters,  Third  Series,  London,  1846,  II,  178, 
*Poli  Epistola,  I,  133: 


APPENDIX  403 

sovereigns.  It  is  all  about  the  duty  of  a  prudent  counselor. 
And  the  following  passages  are  curiously  apposite  to  the 
advice  which  Pole  says  Cromwell  gave  him: — 

Nor  do  I  think  that  Aristotle  and  Plato  would  have 
scorned  the  name  of  perfect  Courtier,  for  we  clearly  see  that 
they  performed  the  works  of  Courtiership,  and  wrought  to 
this  end, — the  one  with  Alexander  the  Great,  the  other 
with  the  kings  of  Sicily.  And  since  the  office  of  a  good 
Courtier  is  to  know  the  prince's  character  and  inclinations, 
and  thus  to  enter  tactfully  into  his  favour  according  to  need 
and  opportunity,  as  we  have  said,  by  those  ways  that  afford 
safe  access,  and  then  to  lead  him  towards  virtue, — Aristotle 
so  well  knew  the  character  of  Alexander,  and  tactfully 
fostered  it  so  well,  that  he  was  loved  and  honoured  more 
than  a  father  by  Alexander.  *  *  *  And  of  these 
achievements  of  Alexander  the  author  was  Aristotle,  using 
the  means  of  a  good  Courtier :  which  Callisthenes  knew  not 
how  to  do,  although  Aristotle  showed  him ;  for  in  his  wish 
to  be  a  pure  philosopher  and  austere  minister  of  naked 
truth,  without  mingling  Courtiership  therewith,  he  lost  his 
life  and  brought  not  help  but  rather  infamy  to  Alexander.1 

This  very  close  parallel  strongly  suggests  that  the  un- 
named book  was  the  Courtier  and  not  the  Prince. 

But,  whether  this  book  that  Cromwell  offered  to  lend 
was  the  Courtier  or  not,  there  is  the  strongest  reason  for 
believing  that  Pole  did  not  think  it  was  the  Prince  till  a 
long  time  "afterward."  He  describes  how  he  "sought  out 
this  book  as  carefully  as  one  seeks  out  the  despatches  of 
an  enemy  to  know  his  plans."  He  certainly  did  not  do  this 
immediately,  for  in  1528  (or  1529),  when  this  talk  took 
place,  Cromwell  was  of  no  importance  whatever  in  the 
English  state.  Pole  himself  describes  him  as  a  man  of 
no  family,  a  mere  hanger-on  of  Wolsey.  Nor  did  he  rise 
at  all,  until,  in  the  beginning  of  1531,  he  became  a  member  of 

1  Quoted  after  L,.  E.  Opdycke's  translation,  New  York,  1903,  2S4-285. 


404  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

the  royal  Council.  It  is  hard  to  understand  why,  previous 
to  that  time,  Pole  could  possibly  have  been  inclined  to  seek 
out,  "as  the  despatches  of  an  enemy's  general,"  the  book 
Cromwell  had  offered  to  lend.  That  he  did  so  in  1531 
is  very  improbable  for  the  following  reasons.  Pole  gives, 
as  a  proof  of  his  accuracy  in  reporting  this  talk  with  Crom- 
well, that  as  soon  as  he  saw  Cromwell  growing  in  authority 
with  the  King,  he  left  England,  fearing  what  would  happen 
"when  he  held  the  helm  of  state."  In  regard  to  this  one 
point  of  leaving  England,  there  is  very  strong  reason  to 
believe  Pole  mistaken  in  his  memories  of  his  motives  seven 
years  before  he  wrote.  He  left  England  in  January,  1532, 
and  he  had  been  trying  to  obtain  permission  to  leave  for 
some  time.1  In  1531,  when  he  must  have  begun  to  ask  license 
to  go  to  Paris,  it  would  have  been  very  difficult  for  any  one 
to  foresee  Cromwell's  future  great  weight  in  the  English 
councils  of  state.  He  was  not  important  enough  to  be 
even  mentioned  in  the  despatches  of  the  imperial  ambassador 
until  April  16,  1533,  when  he  is  spoken  of  briefly  as  "Crom- 
well, who  is  powerful  with  the  King."2  Norfolk  and  the 
other  kindred  of  Anne  Boleyn  were  in  power  at  the  time 
Pole  left  England.  We  have  another  account  of  the  reason 
for  Pole's  leaving  England  besides  that  given  here.  It 
does  not  make  any  mention  of  Cromwell.  Beccatelli,  Pole's 
intimate  friend,  who  wrote  his  life,  says  that  he  left  England 
because  of  the  fury  of  the  King  in  an  interview  he  had 
v/ith  him,  when  the  King  was  so  enraged  at  Pole  that  he 
gripped  the  hilt  of  his  dagger  as  if  to  use  it,  "as  Pole  him- 
self told  me."  "Moved  by  this  offense  of  the  King,  Pole 
felt  he  ought  to  make  every  effort  to  leave  England."8 

1  Despatch  of  imperial  ambassador  Chapuys  to  Charles  V,  Letters  and  Papers 
of  Henry  VIII,  V,  No.  737;  Epistola  ad  Edwardum  VI,  Section  xi,  Poli  Epis- 
tol<c,  IV. 

'  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry   VIII,  VI,  No.  351, 

•  Vita,  vi  and  vii,  Poli  Epistolai,  I. 


APPENDIX  405 

This  lacuna  between  1528  and  1533  is  filled  up  by  Pole 
with  the  account  of  the  long  oration  of  Cromwell  to  the 
king  alluded  to  on  page  394.  The  implication  that  this 
hypothetical  oration  made  Cromwell  at  a  stroke  chief  coun- 
cilor of  the  king,  has  been  accepted  without  examination. 
But  when  tested  by  facts,  by  the  State  Papers,  and  by  Pole's 
own  writings,  it  appears  very  highly  improbable.  Pole  was 
out  of  England  from  October,  1529,  to  July,  1530.  On  his 
return  he  lived  in  retirement.  How  did  Pole  find  out  that 
Cromwell  was  the  real  power  behind  the  throne,  when  the 
Spanish  ambassador,  whose  business  it  was  to  report  the 
intrigues  of  the  court,  and  who  was  in  constant  communica- 
tion with  the  Queen  and  her  friends,  had  no  suspicion  that 
Cromwell  was  of  any  determining  importance  until  1533? 
The  straightforward  account  of  Cromwell's  rise  to  power 
given  by  Cavendish1  agrees  with  all  the  facts  and  presents 
no  mysteries.  Cavendish,  Wolsey's  gentleman  usher,  saw 
Cromwell  constantly,  and  talked  with  him  just  before  he  rode 
up  to  court  to  see  the  King  on  Wolsey's  tangled  affairs,  and, 
as  he  said  in  his  favorite  phrase,  "to  make  or  mar."  Caven- 
dish did  not  approve  of  Cromwell's  policy,  and  therefore 
could  have  had  no  prejudice  in  his  favor.  Moreover,  as  the 
account  of  Cromwell's  rise  comes  as  a  side  issue  into  Caven- 
dish's account  of  Wolsey's  life,  there  was  no  motive,  con- 
scious or  unconscious,  for  distortion.  Pole  had  spoken  to 
Cromwell  but  once  in  his  life.  His  account  is  in  a  highly 
rhetorical  polemic.  The  hypothetical  conversation  of  Crom- 
well with  the  King,  is  necessary  to  his  argument  that  Henry 
is  Antichrist  inspired  by  the  devil.  Tried  by  every  possible 
test  for  determining  the  value  of  historic  evidence,  the  ac- 
count of  Cromwell's  entry  into  the  royal  Council  given  by 

1  George  Cavendish,  Life  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  first  printed  in  Condon,  1641. 


4o6  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Cavendish,  is  far  more  trustworthy  than  the  account  of  Pole. 
Cavendish  says  that  Cromwell,  in  settling  Wolsey's  affairs, 
saw  the  King  several  times,  and  impressed  him  by  "witty 
demeanour"  and  capacity  for  business.  The  King  took  him 
into  his  service  and  made  him  a  royal  councilor.  The  State 
Papers  show  that  his  influence  in  the  Council  was  at  first 
very  small.  He  rose  by  capacity.  In  the  summer  of  1532 
he  was  overwhelmed  with  business.  In  the  fall  he  was  the 
only  commoner  appointed  to  go  with  the  King  to  France. 
In  1533  his  power  with  the  King  was  apparent  to  the  Spanish 
ambassador. 

Not  only  are  there  these  reasons  for  doubting  the  accuracy 
of  Pole's  memory  that  he  left  England  because  of  Crom- 
well's rise  to  power,  but  Pole's  letters  show  unmistakably, 
that,  nearly  five  years  after  he  left  England,  he  did  not 
regard  Cromwell  as  possessed  by  the  devil.  Therefore  he 
had  not  yet  "searched  out"  the  book  that  Cromwell  offered 
to  loan  him  and  found  it  to  be  the  Prince,  for  he  says, 
"I  had  hardly  begun  to  read  it,  before  I  saw  it  was  written 
by  the  hand  of  Satan."  Four  years  after  leaving  England, 
Pole  wrote  to  Cromwell  as  follows: — 

"In  my  heartiest  manner  I  commend  me  unto  you."  He 
says  he  is  glad  to  hear  through  his  brother  of  Cromwell's 
friendly  words  in  assuring  him  of  the  continuance  of  the 
King's  gracious  favor,  which  "I  cannot  but  accept  for  a  great 
singular  pleasure  and  acknowledge  the  same  for  such  a 
benefit  as  few  of  my  friends  could  a  given  beside."  He 
desires  Cromwell  to  do  him  "a  yet  greater  pleasure" :  "That 
it  may  please  you  to  ascertain  His  Highness  of  my  service- 
able and  prompt  mind  to  do  him  service  at  all  times,  wherein 
I  can  say  no  more  but  pray  Almighty  God  to  send  me 
some  good  opportunity,  who  ever  have  you  in  his  blessed 


APPENDIX  407 

keeping."  He  signs  himself  "Your  assuredly  bound  Ray- 
nold  Pole."1 

Pole  could  not  have  written  this  letter  to  a  man  he 
thought  was  governing  England  by  Satan's  Bible.  More 
than  a  year  later  (February,  1537)  Pole  still  had  not 
searched  out  this  satanic  book,  for  at  that  time  Michael 
Throgmorton,  a  gentleman  usher  of  the  Cardinal,  writes  to 
his  friend  Richard  Morison,  "in  the  house  of  my  Lord  Privy 
Seal,"  (Cromwell)  a  long  letter,1  in  which  he  "faithfully 
assures"  Morison  that  Pole  bears  Cromwell  "hearty  affec- 
tion, which,  after  long  communication,  by  entire  and  hearty 
fashion  of  speaking,  he  manifestly  declared,  seeing  that  what 
chance  soever  should  happen,  he  might  be  assuring  of  him  to 
his  power  to  shew  him  that  friendly  heart  and  pleasure  that 
he,  by  his  kindness  and  goodness  showed  toward  him,  hath 
deserved,  with  further  words  to  the  same  tenor  that  at 
this  time  I  will  not  rehearse.  But  briefly  to  conclude,  I  think, 
surely  my  Lord,  your  master,  may  assuredly  rely  of  my 
master's  heart  to  him  as  of  any  friend  he  hath  in  England" ; 
so  that,  if  the  King's  Highness  will  send  any  one  into  Flan- 
ders, (to  confer  with  Pole)  "I  think  my  master  would  be 
most  best  content  to  speak  with  him  than  any  other." 

This  suggestion  Pole  himself  repeats  in  a  letter  to  Crom- 
well written  three  days  later.  He  says:  "by  writing  me- 
seemeth  we  do  not  understand  one  another,  so  that  to 
reply  more  in  this  manner  I  see  no  point,"  suggests  that 
learned  persons  from  the  King  should  meet  him  in  Flanders, 
"and  glad  I  would,  if  it  might  be  that  you  might  be  one  of 
them,  for  you  pretending  (the  word  had  not  yet  acquired  the 
sinister  meaning  of  falsely  putting  forward)  that  affection 
to  the  King's  honor  that  I  no  less  (and  with  the  greatest) 

1  Nine  Historical  Letters,  etc.,  privately  printed  for  J.  P.  C.  (John  Payne 
Collier),  London,  1871;  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  IX,  No.  701. 


408  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

do  bear  to  His  Grace,  if  we  spoke  together,  peradventure 
some  better  ways  might  be  taken  than  can  ever  be  brought 
to  pass  by  writing;  wherein  there  will  never  be  that  end 
that  both  would  desire."1  If  Pole  believed  that  Cromwell 
had  degenerated  into  the  nature  of  a  devil  and  was  the 
minister  of  Satan,  preaching  the  overthrow  of  all  founda- 
tions of  right  and  wrong,  out  of  a  book  written  by  the  ringer 
of  Satan  himself,  in  order  to  confirm  Henry  in  the  career 
of  Antichrist,  these  are  extraordinary  messages  for  a  car- 
dinal of  the  Church  to  send  and  write  to  him. 

Pole,  unaware  that  Cromwell  knew  by  advices  from  Rome 
and  the  French  King,  that  the  object  of  his  mission  to  Flan- 
ders had  been  to  aid  the  insurrection  in  England,2  had  stead- 
ily denied  any  rebellious  intentions.  In  his  letter  to  Cromwell 
of  May  2,  I537,3  he  says  the  King's  demand  for  his  sur- 
render as  a  rebel,  was  caused  by  "the  sinister  and  false  re- 
port of  others  that,  by  false  conjectures  of  things  they  knew 
not,  had  ill  informed  the  King  of  my  purpose  in  coming 
to  these  parts."  But  the  rebellion  he  had  hoped  to  aid 
was  extinguished.  He  thought  himself  in  danger  of  assas- 
sination. He  was  in  danger  of  being  trapanned  and  taken  to 
England,  as  in  1529  Charles  V  had  seized  and  carried  off 
from  the  very  shadow  of  the  Vatican  a  priest  who  had  ap- 

1  This  letter,  printed  in  full  in  Nine  Historical  Letters,  privately  printed  for 
J.  P.  C.  (John  Payne  Collier),  is  not  calendared.  The  following  letter  explains 
its  omission: 

PUBLIC  RECORD  OFFICE,  1st  August  1902 
Mr.  Paul  van  Dyke 
Dear  Sir. 

The  letter  from  Pole  to  Cromwell  16  Feb.  (1537),  to  which  you  refer  is  in 
this  office  but  the  abstract  of  it  was  accidentally  omitted  from  the  Calendar  for 
the  year  1537.  The  nine  letters  are  all  undoubtedly  genuine. 

I  remain 

Yours  faithfully 

R.  H.  BRODIE. 
1  See  reference,  page  387. 

'Nine  Historical  Letters,  etc.;  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  XII, 
Part  I,  No.  1123. 


APPENDIX  409 

pealed  from  his  authority  to  Rome.1  What  he  wrote  to  the 
Pope  was  true  enough.  Ready  as  he  might  be  to  die  if  if 
could  profit  the  Church,  his  death  could  now  only  be  to 
her  dishonor.  Having  permission  to  withdraw,  he  deter- 
mined to  leave  Flanders  secretly.  Throgmorton  wrote  a 
letter2  on  August  20,  insinuating  that  if  Pole  returned  to 
Rome  without  obtaining  some  concession  from  the  King 
about  the  papal  authority,  his  book  would  be  printed  and 
the  excommunication  launched.  The  threat  was  repeated 
September  2  in  the  suggestion  made  to  the  English  agent 
in  Flanders,3  that,  if  the  King  wished  to  stop  such  things  as 
were  likely  to  be  put  forth  shortly  in  Rome,  he  should 
send  at  once  to  Pole. 

This  attempt  to  frighten  Henry  by  the  threat  of  publish- 
ing papal  censures  calling  on  all  Christians  to  drive  him 
from  his  throne,  supported  by  a  book  denouncing  civil  war 
and  appealing  for  foreign  invasion,  received  as  sharp  an 
answer  as  one  with  real  knowledge  of  human  nature  would 
expect.  Two  commissioners,  one  named  by  Pole  himself, 
were  appointed  to  go  to  Pole,  with  the  demand  that  he  lay 
aside  his  claim  to  represent  the  incarnate  justice  of  God 
sitting  in  judgment  on  the  sins  of  the  King  of  England,  or 
abide  the  issue  which  that  claim  made  inevitable.4  The 
time  of  threats  was  past.  Cromwell,  playing  his  game 
to  destroy  in  England  the  political  power  of  the  clergy, 
who,  in  Pole's  opinion,  were  able  to  appeal  for  support  to 
a  college  of  cardinals  mainly  composed  of  Italians,  French- 
men, and  Spaniards  who  believed  themselves  appointed  to 
speak  the  divine  judgments  to  all  peoples  of  the  earth,  forced 

1  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois  de  Paris  sous  le  Regne  de  Francois  I,  public  par 
M.  L,.  Lalanne,  Societe  de  1'Histoire  de  France,  1854,  403. 
•Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  XII,  Part  II,  No.  552. 
•Ibid.,  No.  635. 
« Ibid.,  Nos.  619,  620. 


410  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

his  adversary  to  show  his  hand — a  hand  which  Pole  thought 
contained  infamy  for  Henry,  serious  danger  of  insurrection 
at  home,  and  the  imminent  possibility  of  foreign  invasion. 
But  Pole,  without  waiting  for  the  arrival  of  the  commission 
he  had  asked  for,  was  already  on  his  way  to  Rome,1  having 
started  August  22.  Throgmorton,  as  he  afterward  boasted, 
had  tricked  Cromwell;2  and  Cromwell  answers  this  threat 
of  publishing  the  book  and  loosing  the  anathemas  of  the 
Church  to  provoke  rebellion  and  invasion,  by  a  letter  defying 
Pole  and  the  Pope.  "You  have  bleared  my  eye  once,"  he 
writes  to  Throgmorton,  "you  shall  not  again."  He  threatens 
Pole  with  the  most  brutal  agencies  known  to  contemporary 
politics — assassination  and  proscription  of  his  family.3  Then 
Pole  began  to  see  in  Cromwell  what  he  had  never  seen 
before — the  agent  of  Satan  for  hardening  Henry  in  the 
career  of  Antichrist. 

The  words  "had  never  seen  before"  are  used  advisedly. 
Not  only  are  Pole's  letters  to  Cromwell,  up  to  the  beginning 
of  1537,  inconsistent  with  a  belief  on  his  part  that  Crom- 
well had  become  a  devil  and  was  the  instrument  of  Satan 
hardening  Henry  in  crime,  but,  in  1536,  he  wrote  an  alto- 
gether different  account  of  the  agent  of  Satan  in  that  per- 
suasion. When  he  had  been  asked  to  reply  to  the  question, 

1  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  Nos.   559,  598,  725. 

*  He  had  left  England  to  return  to  Pole,  telling  Cromwell  that  if  he  could 
not  persuade   Pole  to   resign  the  cardinal's   hat  and   resume   allegiance   to   the 
King,  he  would  desert  Pole's  service. 

*  In  regard  to  these  two  letters  from  Cromwell,  one  sending  commissioners, 
the  other  threats  and  defiance,  Mr.  Gairdner  seems  to  have  fallen  into  a  slight 
error,   a   thing  very   unusual    for   that   distinguished  scholar.     He   says   in   the 
preface    to    Letters    and    Papers    of    Henry    VIII,    Volume    XII,    Part    II, 
xxxvi,     "In    short     the     King    .     .     .     had     entertained    the    idea    of    send- 
ing    some      one      to     confer      with      Pole     .     .     .     [but]      had      on      second 
thoughts     resolved     to     cast     aside     all     decency     and     distinctly     threaten," 
etc.     No.   725,   a   letter   from   Hutton,   shows   that   Cromwell's   letter   No.    619, 
promising  to  send  the  commissioners  asked  for  by  Pole,  had  been  forwarded  to 
Throgmorton,  but  that  Pole  and  Throgmorton  had  already  gone  to  Italy  without 
waiting  to  receive  it,  the  letter  of  Throgmorton  not  being  delivered  to  Hutton 


APPENDIX  411 

whether  the  supremacy  of  the  pope  had  been  established 
by  God»  a  book  by  Richard  Sampson1  against  the  papal 
supremacy  had  been  sent  to  him  that  he  might  consider  its 
arguments.  Pole's  answer  to  the  question,  as  already  re- 
lated, took  the  form  of  the  book  Pro  Ecclesiastics  Unitatis 
Defensione.  He  says,2  addressing  Henry:  "God  permitted 
Satan  to  come  to  you  and  persuade  you  that  you  would 
increase  your  glory  by  taking  the  name  Supreme  Head  of 
the  Church."  "But  how  did  Satan  persuade  you  to  this? 
Why  should  we  ask  how,  when  we  have  the  book  of  Samp- 
son, who  was  the  instrument  of  Satan  to  persuade  you  to  do 
it?  Is  anything  hidden  which  Sampson  and  the  other  in- 
struments of  Satan  said  in  thy  ears,  since  they  have  been 
willing  to  commit  it  to  writing?"  Now  if  in  1536,  when 
he  wrote  these  words,  Pole  had  been  certain  that  Cromwell 
had  come  straight  from  Satan  to  Henry — he  says  in  the 
Apologia  (1539),  "I  knew  who  sent  him  and  I  knew  the 
message  he  brought" — as  the  special  emissary  of  the  devil 
to  persuade  Henry  to  take  the  title  Supreme  Head  of  the 
Church,  and  that  Cromwell  had  done  it  by  arguments  drawn 
from  the  book  of  Machiavelli,  it  is  psychologically  very  hard 
to  believe,  that,  while  speaking  of  those  implements  of  Satan, 
Sampson  and  Sampson's  book,  Pole  should  not  have  men- 
tioned either  Cromwell  or  Machiavelli's  book.  But  neither 
Cromwell  nor  Machiavelli  is  mentioned,  either  here  or  any- 

until  twelve  days  after  date  (No.  635).  It  was  after  receiving  this  note  from 
Hutton,  telling  him  that  Pole  and  Throgmorton  had  gone  on  without  waiting 
and  that  there  was  no  use  in  sending  commissioners,  that  Cromwell  wrote  No. 
795.  In  spite  of  this  threat,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  any  attempt  was 
made  to  assassinate  Pole.  One  instance  where  Pole  was  afraid  of  a  certain 
man,  which  is  cited  in  the  preface  of  a  volume  of  the  Letters  and  Papers  of 
Henry  VIII  as  a  proof  of  the  attempt,  is  shown  by  documents  in  the  volume 
to  be  a  mistake.  The  supposed  murderer  was  at  the  time  trying  to  get  pardon 
and  employment  from  the  King.  An  attempt  was  made  to  trapan  Pole,  bring 
him  to  England,  and  execute  him,  but  Henry  refused  Wyatt's  offer  to  have  him 
assassinated. 

1  Oratio  qua  docet  hortatur  admonet  omnes  potissimum  Anglos  regicr  digni- 
tati  cum  primis  ut  obediant,  etc.,  London,  1533. 

3  Ingolstadt  edition,  Book  III,  401. 


412  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

where  else  in  the  Pro  Ecclesiastics   Unitatis  Defensione. 

Having  shown  that  up  to  February  of  1537,  Pole  did  not 
regard  Cromwell  as  possessed  of  a  legion  of  devils  nor  as 
preaching  Satan's  Bible,  //  Principe,  the  next  question  would 
be,  When  did  Pole  first  read  Machiavelli,  and  so  finding  out, 
as  he  says,  the  principles  of  his  action,  discover  Cromwell's 
devilish  nature?  For  direct  evidence  on  this  question,  I 
have  searched  in  vain  Pole's  correspondence  and  that  of 
his  friends.  In  his  extant  writings  to  1540,  so  far  as 
printed,  Pole  does  not  mention  Machiavelli  except  in  the 
Apologia.  This  also  is  a  strange  thing,  if  he  knew,  for  years 
before  he  wrote  the  Apologia,  that  Cromwell  was  responsible 
for  the  sins  of  Henry,  that  Machiavelli  and  the  devil  were 
responsible  for  Cromwell's  advice.  The  omission  is  not 
however  conclusive,  for  some  of  Pole's  letters  may  be  lost. 

But  it  is  a  fact  that,  so  far  as  we  know,  the  only  time  Pole 
alluded  to  Machiavelli's  evil  influence,  before  he  wrote  the 
Apologia,  was  in  March,  1538.  This  was  not  long  after 
a  trip  to  Florence  (February  or  March,  I538),1  where,  as 
he  tells  us  in  the  Apologia,  he  discussed  Machiavelli's  doc- 
trines, and  not  long  before  he  began  the  Apologia.  A  rec- 
ord of  this  conversation  has  been  preserved  in  a  curious  way. 
John  a  Legh,  a  traveler  to  many  lands,  who  had  spent  some 
years  in  Italy  and  had  been  conversant  with  Pole,  returned 
to  England  in  1540.  He  was  arrested  and  put  in  the  Tower 

1 1  have  been  able  to  date  this  visit  to  Florence  by  a  process  too  long  to  be 
described  in  a  note,  but  apparently  certain  in  its  result.  Mr.  L,.  A.  Burd,  in  his 
admirable  edition  of  //  Principe  (Oxford,  1891),  dates  the  passage  of  the 
Apologia  that  tells  of  discussing  Machiavelli  in  Florence,  1534  (p.  37).  He  is 
doubtless  misled  by  the  idea  that  the  Apologia,  being  a  preface  to  the  Pro 
Unitatis  Defensione,  was  written  when  it  was  published,  and  he  follows  Grasse 
(vers  1536)  and  Brunei  (circa  1536)  for  the  publication  of  the  Pro  Unitatis 
Defensione.  Professor  Villari  in  his  Machiavelli  does  the  same  thing.  As 
already  shown,  page  388,  the  publication  was  in  1539.  If,  as  seems  probable, 
the  Apologia  was  finished  in  the  spring  or  summer  of  1539,  "superiore  hyeme" 
would  mean  the  winter  of  1538  (Pole's  usage  often  includes  in  "winter"  the 
first  month  of  spring  and  the  last  of  autumn). 


APPENDIX  413 

for  examination.  A  deposition  giving  an  account  of  his  in- 
tercourse with  Pole,  has  survived.1  He  writes  that  at  a 
dinner  given  at  the  time  when  Pole,  as  head  of  the  English 
Hospital  at  Rome,  made  a  certain  Hillyear  master  and  a 
certain  Goldwell  custos,  Pole  talked  about  the  sacrilege  of 
the  English  King  in  "pulling  Thomas  of  Canterbury  from 
his  shrine."  He  then  asked  "what  stories  I  had  read  in 
the  Italian  tongue."  I  answered  that  as  yet  I  had  no  leis- 
ure, but,  on  going  home,  I  would  get  some  and  read  them. 
He  warned  me  against  reading  "the  story  of  Nicolo  Match- 
auello,"  which  had  already  poisoned  England  and  would 
poison  all  Christendom,  and  said  he  would  do  all  he  could  to 
cause  it  "to  be  dystynkyd  and  put  down  howt  off  rem- 
berans."  This  conversation  could  not  have  taken  place 
before  March,  1538.2 

Another  strange  chance  has  preserved  to  us  a  record  of 
the  fact  that  one  of  Cromwell's  intimate  friends,  Lord 
Morley,  a  man  who  had  frequently  engaged  with  him  in 
literary  conversation,  and  more  particularly  in  conversation 
about  Florence  (see  passages  in  his  letter),  sent  him,  in 
the  beginning  of  I539,8  a  volume  containing  the  Florentine 
Histories  and  the  Prince  of  Machiavelli,  as  something  which 
Cromwell  had  never  seen  before.  Now  if  Pole  explicitly  as- 
serted that  Cromwell  had  Machiavelli  before  1539,  and 

1  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  XV,  No.  721. 

2  This   is   established   by   information    kindly   furnished    by   the   head   of   the 
English  College  at  Rome,  which  is  the  successor  and  literary  heir  of  the  English 
Hospital.     All   documents  relating  to  these  appointments   were  not   found,   and 
current   statements   about   them   are,   probably  confused,   but   an    index   of  docu- 
ments  which   was    found   mentions    a   papal   letter   of   March,    1538,   appointing 
Cardinal  Reginald  Pole  head  of  the  Hospital. 

3  Sir  Henry   Ellis,   who   printed   this  letter   in   full    (Original  Letters,   Third 
Series,  III,  63),  dated  it  1537.     It  is  dated  only  February  13.     The  editors  of 
the  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII  (XIV,  Part  I,   No.   285)   have  assigned 
it  to  1539,  for  good  reasons,  which  may  be  traced  in  Volume  XIV.     If  it  were 
written   in   1537,   it  would   make   no   great   difference   to   the   reasoning  of  this 
article. 


414  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

Lord  Morley,  early  in  1539,  sent  Cromwell  the  book  as  a 
novelty,  the  very  strong  probability  would  be  that  Pole  was 
mistaken  and  Lord  Morley  right;  for  Pole  had  talked  with 
Cromwell  only  once  in  his  life,  and  Morley  had  often  talked 
intimately  with  him  on  politics  and  literature.  But  the 
reader  must  again  be  reminded  that  Pole  does  not  say  that 
Cromwell  had  Machiavelli  at  any  given  time.  He  records 
an  old  conversation  with  Cromwell,  and  says  that  "after- 
ward" he  found  out  that  he  was  a  close  student  of  Mach- 
iavelli. The  conclusive  reasons  for  believing  that  "after- 
ward" must  carry  us  on  at  least  to  March,  1537,  have  been 
given  from  Pole's  own  writings.  What  is  more  reasonable 
than  to  believe,  that,  in  the  spring  of  1539,  Pole  had  heard 
from  his  sympathizers  in  England  that  Cromwell  was  dis- 
cussing with  keen  interest  the  book  sent  him  by  Lord  Mor- 
ley, and  that  in  the  Apologia,  which  Pole  was  finishing  at 
the  time,  he  should  combine  with  an  attack  on  Cromwell 
and  Henry  the  fulfilment  of  the  resolution  expressed  the 
preceding  spring,  which  John  a  Legh  naively  reported  as  a 
plan  to  cause  "Nicolo  Matchauello"  to  be  everywhere 
"dystynkyd  and  put  down"  out  of  all  remembrance? 

Besides  this  special  line  of  investigation,  many  instances 
might  be  cited  to  show  that  the  judgments  of  the  Apologia 
are  not  those  of  a  historian,  but  of  a  polemic,  writing  out  of 
a  mood  the  very  honesty  of  whose  intense  zeal  makes  his 
work  untrustworthy.  Before  doing  so,  it  is  well  to  recall 
that  a  partizan  bias  in  forming  moral  judgments  was  com- 
mon to  the  age.  An  intense  partizan  is  apt,  often  uncon- 
sciously, to  judge  an  opponent  of  his  cause  far  more  se- 
verely than  a  supporter  of  it ;  and  the  working  of  this  natural 
tendency  can  be  seen  nowhere  more  plainly  than  among  the 
judgments  upon  the  morality  of  actions  uttered  by  men  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  The  delinquencies  of  the  princes 


APPENDIX  .     415 

who  embraced  Lutheranism,  bulk  smaller  in  the  pamphlets 
of  Lutheran  divines  than  those  of  Roman  Catholic  princes. 
Huguenot  writings  or  speeches  at  the  time  of  the  civil  wars, 
are  apt  to  paint  in  vivid  colors  the  atrocities  of  Roman 
Catholic  soldiers.  They  seldom  emphasize  strongly  the 
savage  deeds  of  Huguenot  partizan  bands.  And  to  Pole,  as 
to  most  men  of  his  time,  circumstances,  unconsciously  to 
himself,  altered  cases. 

According  to  the  method  pursued  in  this  article,  his 
tendency  to  suffer  his  moral  judgments  to  be  altered  by  cir- 
cumstances, will  first  be  illustrated  by  an  instance  taken  from 
his  writings  outside  the  Apologia,  Damianus  a  Goes,  writ- 
ing to  Pole,  spoke  of  the  great  ingratitude  of  Richard 
Morison,  who,  after  being  supported  by  Pole  at  Venice,  had 
repaid  his  benefits  by  controversial  attacks.  Now  this  was 
precisely  the  charge  his  enemies  made  against  Pole.  He 
had  been  supported  as  a  student  on  a  royal  pension  for 
years,  and  had  used  his  learning  against  the  King.  Pole  an- 
swered, with  unquestionable  sincerity,  that  he  had  done  so 
for  conscience's  sake.  It  never  seemed  to  occur  to  him  that 
there  was  any  possibility  of  force  in  Morison's  plea  that 
he  had  stood  by  the  King  against  his  former  benefactor,  for 
conscience's  sake.  He  answers  Damianus  a  Goes :  "Concern- 
ing what  you  write  about  Morison,  you  rightly  detest  his 
ungrateful  soul.  The  vice  of  ingratitude  is  a  very  summary 
of  evil.  But  if  he  has  been  so  ungrateful  to  God,  what 
wonder  that  he  has  been  so  ungrateful  to  me  ?"  No  one  with 
any  knowledge  of  human  nature,  would  see  in  this  a  proof 
of  insincerity.  It  only  expresses  a  tendency  common  to  all 
partizans,  intensified  in  the  death-struggle  of  opposing  ideals 
in  the  sixteenth  century.  When  Protestant  Elizabeth 
ascended  the  throne,  John  Knox  was  not  so  positive  as  he 
had  been  under  Roman  Catholic  Mary,  in  asserting  that  the 


416  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

rule  of  a  woman  was  against  the  laws  of  God  and  nature. 
When  the  Huguenot,  Henry  of  Navarre,  came  into  sight  as 
the  legitimate  heir  of  the  throne  of  France,  Huguenot  con- 
troversialists began  to  feel  the  power  of  the  divine  right  of 
kings,  and  Jesuit  writers  began  to  see  new  force  in  argu- 
ments for  the  supremacy  of  the  people. 

A  very  slight  examination  of  the  Apologia  makes  evident 
the  fact  that  Pole's  moral  judgments  are  tremendously 
swayed  by  his  partizan  religious  sympathies.1  For  instance, 
he  denounces  in  the  most  unmeasured  terms  the  lustful- 
ness  of  Henry  VIII.  Most  courts  at  that  time  were  bad 
places,  and  Henry's  was  not  one  of  the  best.  But  it  is 
hard  to  see  that  Henry  was  a  more  licentious  man  than 
James  V  of  Scotland.  James  had  illegitimate  children  by 
six  different  mothers,  four  of  them  being  daughters  of 
noblemen  of  his  court.  Pole  could  hardly  have  been  un- 
aware of  this,  for  several  of  these  children  held  important 
ecclesiastical  benefices  conferred  at  Rome.  Yet,  in  his 
letters  to  James,  Pole  addresses  him  in  terms  of  unbounded 
admiration:  "You  set  yourself  forth  as  the  strenuous  min- 
ister of  Christ's  piety,  the  noble  offspring  of  pious  kings, 
the  constancy  of  whose  piety  you  repeat  in  all  things." 

The  conclusion  is  inevitable  that  the  judgment  expressed 
upon  the  unique  and  unexampled  licentiousness  of  Henry  in 
the  denunciation  of  the  Apologia,  is,  probably  unconsciously, 
based  upon  the  fact  that  Henry's  passion  for  Anne  Boleyn 
was  the  chief  cause  which  led  him  to  deny  the  papal  suprem- 
acy. Pole  would  evidently  have  agreed  with  Sanders,  who 
wrote  in  The  Rise  and  Growth  of  the  Anglican  Schism:2 
"The  royal  household  consisted  of  men  utterly  abandoned, 

1  The  writer  here  intends  no  defense  of  Henry.  He  is  only  suggesting  a 
method  of  testing  the  accuracy  of  Pole's  judgment  that  Henry's  deeds  display  a 
unique  atrocity  of  lust  and  cruelty. 

8  ICdition  by  David  Lewis,  London,  Burns  and  Oates,  1877,  24. 


APPENDIX  417 

gamblers,  adulterers,  panderers,  swindlers,  false  swearers, 
blasphemers,  extortioners  and  even  heretics." 

Pole's  judgment  upon  the  unexampled  cruelty  of  Henry, 
is  evidently  inspired  by  the  fact  that  its  victims  were  largely 
supporters  of  the  old  relation  of  England  to  the  Papacy. 
Henry  shed  more  noble  blood,  but  he  did  not  put  to  death 
more  people,  than  several  other  rulers  of  his  age.  In  the 
year  1534,  when  Pole  was  writing  the  Pro  Unitatis  Defen- 
sione,  which  denounced  Henry  as  guilty  of  inhumanity 
unmatched  in  history,  Francis  I,  whose  character  Pole 
praises,  burnt  twenty-three  Lutherans  in  Paris,  presiding 
at  the  execution  of  six  who  were  dipped  in  the  balanqoire,  a 
machine  which  swung  them  up  and  down  in  the  flame  in 
order  to  prolong  the  death-struggle.  Pole  could  scarcely 
have  been  ignorant  of  this. 

Pole  rebukes  in  the  severest  terms  the  cruelty  of  Henry's 
punishment  of  the  northern  rebellion  which  centered  around 
the  Pilgrimage  of  Grace.  He  has  no  word  of  blame  for  the 
comparatively  greater  severity  of  Mary  in  executing  about 
one  hundred  for  Wyatt's  rebellion.  He  denounces  the  ex- 
ecution of  More  and  Fisher  as  deeds  worse  than  those  of 
Nero  and  Domitian.  It  was  a  savage  act;  but  when  Pole 
was  head  of  the  English  Church  and  chief  councilor  of  the 
throne,  to  whom  Philip  had  solemnly  committed  the  care  of 
his  wife  and  kingdom,  he  expressly  approved  a  deed,  which, 
from  the  modern  point  of  view,  was,  like  the  excution  of 
More  and  Fisher,  an  act  of  savage  and  superfluous  cruelty. 
In  a  letter  to  Philip  he  reports  with  full  approval1  the  burn- 
ing of  Latimer  and  Ridley.  And  if,  during  those  three  years 
of  Mary's  rule  whose  record  of  executions  cannot  be 
matched  during  the  entire  reign  of  Henry,  Pole  used  his 
authority  as  head  of  the  English  Church,  or  his  influence  as 

li  Epistolee,  V,  84. 


418  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

chief  councilor  of  the  throne,  to  save  any  one  from  death,  no 
record  of  it  has  survived.  He  had,  for  Mary's  conduct 
and  character,  nothing  but  the  fullest  praise.  These  ob- 
servations do  not  imply  the  least  doubt  of  the  sincerity  of 
Pole's  denunciations  of  the  crimes  of  Henry,  nor  question 
the  entire  honesty  of  his  approval  of  the  punishment  of  the 
two  or  three  hundred  heretics  burnt  by  Mary.  They  simply 
illustrate  the  fact,  that  the  controversial  writers  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  used  words  like  cruelty  and  wickedness  from 
a  standpoint  of  moral  judgment  which  would  be  assumed 
by  very  few  men  of  to-day,  whether  Roman  Catholics  or 
dissidents  from  the  ancient  church.  And  the  Apologia  of 
Pole,  in  purpose,  tone,  language,  and  judgment,  is  one  of 
the  most  violently  polemic  writings  of  the  century. 

The  writer  ventures  to  suggest,  in  view  of  the  foregoing 
examination,  that  there  is  far  more  reason  for  rejecting 
Pole's  portrait  of  Cromwell  in  the  Apologia  than  the  por- 
trait of  Cromwell  in  Foxe's  Book  of  Martyrs,  now  very 
properly  set  aside  by  modern  writers  as  one-sided.  The 
true  portrait  of  Thomas  Cromwell,  is  to  be  made  out  of 
the  positive  record  of  his  acts.  And  he  ought  to  be  judged 
by  his  own  ideals,  not  by  ideals  he  rejected.  Over  seven 
thousand  letters  and  papers  relating  to  him,  have  been  cal- 
endared. The  inaccurate  memories  of  his  bitterest  enemy 
should  no  longer  distort  their  interpretation.  Thomas 
Cromwell  was  no  "Martyr  of  the  Gospel."  But  the  diabol- 
ically inspired  disciple  of  Machiavelli,  is  a  creation  of  the 
excited  imagination  of  Pole.  And  the  mysteriously  sinister 
atmosphere  which  modern  writers  have  borrowed  from  Pole 
to  throw  around  their  portraits  of  one  of  the  most  capable 
of  English  statesmen,  is  not  the  light  of  history. 


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GRAF,  ARTURO.    Attraverso  il  Cinquecento.    Torino,  1888. 
GRUNPECK.      Die    Geschichte    Freidrichs    III    und    Maximilian    I. 

Geschichtschreiber    der    deutschen    Vorzeit.    Zweite    Ausgabe. 

Band  3. 
FISH,   SIMON.    Supplication  of  the   Beggars.     Early  English   Text 

Society,  1871. 
FONTES  RERUM  AUSTRIACARUM.    Wien. 

FORSCHUNGEN  ZUR  DEUTSCHEN  GESCHICHTE.      Gottingen.      26  volumes. 

FOXE,  JOHN.  Book  of  Martyrs.  Edited  by  S.  R.  Catley.  London, 
1837.  8  volumes. 

VON  FRUNDSBERG.  Historia  und  Beschreibung  Herrn  Georgen  von 
Frundsbergs  Ritters  Mannlicher  Kriegsssachen,  etc.  Franckfurt 
am  Meyn,  1568. 

FRIEDMANN,  PAUL.    Anne  Boleyn.    London,  1884.    2  volumes. 

FUGGER.  Spiegel  der  Ehren  des  Ertz-Hauses  Oesterreich  erweitert 
durch  S.  von  Birken.  Niirnberg,  1668. 

HALL,  EDWARD.    Hall's  Chronicle,  etc.    London,  1809. 

HARPSFIELD,  NICHOLAS.  A  treatise  on  the  pretended  divorce  be- 
tween Henry  VIII  and  Catharine  of  Aragon.  Printed  for  the 
Camden  Society,  1878.  New  series,  volume  21. 

HERBERT,  WILLIAM.  The  History  of  the  Twelve  Great  Livery  Com- 
panies of  London.  London,  1836.  2  volumes. 

HUBER,  A.    Geschichte  Oesterreichs.    Gotha,  1885-1896.    5  volumes. 

HUME,  M.  A.  S.  A  Chronicle  of  Henry  VIII  of  England  trans- 
lated by  M.  A.  S.  Hume.  London,  1889. 

JAGER,  ALBRECHT.  Sitzungsberichte  der  Kaiserlichen  Akademie  der 
Wissenschaften.  Philosophisch-Historischen  Classe. 

JAGER,  ALBRECHT.    Archiv  fiir  Oesterreichische  Geschichte  LI. 

JAHRBUCHER  DER  KUNSTHISTORISCHEN  SAMMLUNGEN  DES  ALLER- 
HOCHSTEN  KAISERHAUSES,  etc.  Vienna. 

JANSSEN,  JOHANNES.  Geschichte  des  deutschen  Volkes  zeitdem 
Ausgang  des  Mittelalters.  Siebente  verbesserte  auflage,  Frei- 
burg im  Breisgau,  1881. 

JOURNAL  D'UN  BOURGEOIS  DE  PARIS  sous  LE  REGNE  DE  FRANCOIS  I. 
La  Societe  de  1'Histoire  de  France,  1854. 


422  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

DEUTCHES  KUNSTBLATT. 

VON  KRAUSS,  VICTOR.    See  Maximilian. 

KLAJE,  HERMANN.    Die  Schlacht  bei  Guinegate.    Greifs  wald,  1890. 

LAMPRECHT,  KARL.  Deutsche  Geschichte.  Berlin,  1894-1905.  7  vol- 
umes. 

LAPSLEY  GAILLARD  T.  The  County  Palatine  of  Durham.  Harvard 
Historical  Studies.  Volume  8.  New  York  and  London,  1900. 

LE  GLAY.    See  Maximilian. 

LETTERS  AND  PAPERS,  FOREIGN  AND  DOMESTIC  OF  THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY 
VIII.  London,  1862-1905.  19  volumes. 

LETTERE  SCRITTE  A  PIETRO  ARETINO  EMENDATE  PER  CURA  DI  TEODORICO 
LANDONI.  Bologna,  1873.  2  volumes  in  four  parts.  Edizione 
di  Soli,  202  Esemplari. 

LETTERE  DI  M.  PIETRO  ARETINO.  Paris,  1609.  6  volumes.  All  quo- 
tations of  letters  are  from  this  edition.  It  was  apparently  set, 
partly,  by  printers  ignorant  of  Italian.  It  is  called  by  an  essayist 
on  Aretino  "Edizione  scorrettissima."  The  first  volume  is  ac- 
cessible in  the  well  edited  volume  of  Daelli,  Bibliotheca  Rara, 
Vol.  51.  Milano,  1864. 

LORENZ,  O.  Reichskanzler  und  Reichskanzlei.  Preuss.  Jahrbiicher, 
Vol.  XXIX. 

Luzio,  ALESSANDRO.  Pietro  Aretino  nei  primi  suoi  anni  a  Venezia 
e  la  Corte  dei  Gonzage.  Torino,  1888. 

Luzio,  ALESSANDRO.  Un  Pronostico  Satirico  di  Pietro  Aretino, 
Bergamo,  1900. 

MACHIAVELLI  NiccoLd.  II  Principe.  Edited  by  L.  A.  Burd.  Ox- 
ford, 1891. 

MAXIMILIAN  I.    A  large  number  of  his  works  and  books  he  caused 
to  be  made,  are  magnificently  printed  in  the  Jahrbucher  der 
Kunsthistorischen  Sammlungen,  etc.,  as  follows: 
Genealogie  VII. 
Heilige  IV. 
Weiss  Kunig  VI. 

Latin  Autobiography  (fragment)  VI. 
Zeugbiicher  XIII  and  XV. 
Teuerdank  VIII. 

His  letters  may  be  found  in  the  following  works: 
Correspondance  de  1'Empereur  Maximilien  ler  et  de  Marguerite 

d'Autriche.    Le  Glay.    Paris,  1839. 

Maximilians     I     vertraulicher     Briefwechsel     mit     Sigmund 
Priischenk.    Victor  von  Krauss.    Innsbruck,  1875. 


LIST  OF  BOOKS  CITED  423 

Lettres   ine*dites   de   Maximilien   I   sur  les   affaires   des   Pays 

Bas.     Bruxelles,  1851.    2  volumes. 
Lettres  de  Maximilien  a  1'Abbe  de  Saint  Pierre  a  Gand.    Mes- 

sager  Historique  de  la  Belgique. 

Other  letters  are  scattered  through  a  large  number  of  journals. 
Memorandum  books.    Printed  in  Hormayr's  Taschenbuch  fur 

die  Vaterlandische  Geschichte.    Volumes  IV,  V,  VIII. 
Albrecht   Diirers   Randzeichnungen   aus   dem   Gebetbuche   des 
Kaisers    Maximilian    I    mit    eingedrucktem    original-texte. 
Miinchen  J.  Roth. 
Kaiser  Maximilian's  I  Geheimes  Jagdbuch.  Herausgegeben  von 

Th.  G.  von  Kara jan.    Wien,  1881. 
Das  Jagdbuch  Kaiser  Maximilians  I.  Herausgegeben  von  Dr. 

Michael  Mayr.    Innsbruck,  1901. 
Das  Fischereibuch  Kaiser  Maximilians  I.  Herausgegeben  von 

Dr.  Michael  Mayr.    Innsbruck,  19x11. 
Freydal;  des  Kaiser  Maximilian  I  Turniere  und  Mummereien 

Quirin  von  Leitner.    Vienna,  1882. 
The  Triumphs  of  the  Emperor  Maximilian  I,  edited  by  Alfred 

Aspland  for  the  Holbein  Society.    London,  1872. 
MAZZUCHELLI,   GIAMMAMA.    La  Vita  di  pietro  Aretino.  Edizione 

Seconda.    Brescia,  1763. 

MERRIMAN,  ROGER  BIGELOW.    The  Life  and  Letters  of  Thomas  Crom- 
well.   Oxford,  Clarendon  Press,  1902. 

MOLMENTI.    Storia  di  Venezia  nella  vita  privata.    Torino,  1885. 
MORE,  CRESSACRE.    Life  of  Sir  Thomas  More.    London,  Pickering, 

1828. 

MORE,  THOMAS.    Workes.    London,  1557. 

MORISON,  RICHARD.    An  Invective  agenste  the  great  and  detestible 
vice  of  treason,  wherein  the  secret  practices,  etc.    London,  1539. 
MORISON,  RICHARD.    Apomaxis  Calumniarum.    London,  1537. 
MILTON,  JOHN.    The  Prose  Works  of  John  Milton.    Bohns  Stan- 
dard Library.    London.    5  volumes. 
NEUDECKER  AND  PRELLER.     Freidrichs  des  weisen  Leben  und  Zeit- 

geschichte  nach  Spalatins  Handschrift  herausgegeben. 
NINE  HISTORICAL  LETTERS  PRIVATELY  PRINTED  FOR  J.  P.  C.    London, 

1871. 

NUOVA  ANTOLOGIA. 
ORATIO  QUAE  DOCET  ADMONET  OMNES  POTTISSIMUM  ANGLOS  REGIAE 

DIGNITATI,  ETC.    London,  1533. 
PEARSON,  CHARLES  H.    Historical  Maps  of  England.    London,  1883. 


424  RENASCENCE  PORTRAITS 

PHILIPS,  THOMAS.    History  of  the  Life  of  Reignald  Pole.    Oxford, 

1764. 
PIRKHEIMER,   WiLLiBALD.    Schweizcrkrieg   nach    Pirckheimers   Au- 

tographum   ira   Britischen   Museum,   herausgegeben   von   Karl 

Ruck.    Miinchen,  1895. 
POCOCK,    NICHOLAS.    Records   of  the   Reformation.    The   Divorce. 

Oxford,  1870. 
POLE,  REGINALD.     Epistolarum  Reginaldi  Poli  S.  R.  E.     Cardinalis 

et  Aliorum  ad  ipsum.    Brixise,  1744.    5  volumes. 
POLE,  REGINALD.    Ad  Henricum  Octavum  pro  Ecclesiasticae  Unitatis 

Defensione.    Ingolstadt,  1587. 
POLLARD,  ALBERT  F.    Henry  VIII.    London,  1902. 
POOLE,  REGINALD  LANE.    Historical  Atlas  of  Modern  Europe.    Ox- 
ford, Clarendon  Press,  1902. 
PRUSCHENK,  SEE  VON  KRAUSS. 
Rossi,  VITTORIO.     Pasquinate  de  Pietro  Aretino.     Palermo-Torino, 

1891. 

ST.  PAUL'S.    A  Monthly  Magazine.    London. 
SANDERS,  NICHOLAS.     Rise   and  Growth  of  the  Anglican   Schism, 

published  A.  D.  1585.    Translated  with  introduction  and  notes 

by  David  Lewis.    London,  1877. 
SANUTO,  MARINO.    I  Diarii  di  Marino  Sanuto.    Venezia,  1889-1903. 

58  volumes. 
SCHANZ,  GEORG.    Englische  Handelspolitik  gegen  ende  des  Mittelal- 

ters,  etc.    Leipzig,  1881. 
SCHELHORN,    J.    G.    Amoenitates    Historiae    Ecclesiasticae    et    Lit- 

erariae.    Leipzig,  1737. 
SCHMIDT,  CHARLES.    Histoire  Litteraire  de  1'Alsace  a  la  fin  du  XVe 

et  au  commencement  du  XVIe  Siecle.    Paris,  1879. 
SCHULTHEISS,  ALB.     Pietro  Aretino  als  Stammvater  des  modernen 

Litteratenthums.      Sammlung      gemeinverstandlicher      wissen- 

chaftlicher   Vortrage.    Neue    folge.    Fiinfte    Serie,    Heft    114. 

Hamburg,  1800. 
DE  SMET,  J.  J.     Me'moire  Historique  sur  la  Guerre  de  Maximilien 

contre    les    Villes    de    Flandre.    Me'moire    de    I'Acade'mie    de 

Bruxelles.    Without  date. 
SOCIETY  OF  ANTIQUARIES.    Catalogue  of  a  Collection  of  Broadsides, 

etc.    London,  1866. 

SPEDDING,  JAMES.  The  Works  of  Francis  Bacon.    Boston.    15  vol- 
umes. 

STAFFETI,  LUIGL    II  Cardinale  Innocenzo  Cybo.    Firenze,  1804. 
STARKEY,  THOMAS.    A  Dialogue  between  Cardinal  Pole  and  Thomas 


LIST  OF  BOOKS  CITED  425 

Lupset,  Lecturer  in  Rhetoric  at  Oxford.  Edited  by  J.  M. 
Cowper.  Early  English  Text  Society,  1871. 

STATUTES  OF  THE  REALM.  Record  Commission  1810-1828.  10  vol- 
umes. 

STOW,  JOHN.  A  Survey  of  the  Cities  of  London  and  Westminster, 
etc.  The  sixth  edition.  London,  1754.  2  volumes. 

STOW,  JOHN.  The  Annales  or  Generall  Chronicle  of  England.  Lon- 
don, 1615. 

STUBBS,  WILLIAM,  Bishop  of  Oxford.  The  Constitutional  History  of 
England.  Oxford  Clarendon  Press,  1897. 

TUNSTALL,  CUTHBERT.  A  Letter  Sent  unto  Reginald  Pole,  etc. 
London,  1560. 

ULMANN,  HEINRICH.  Kaiser  Maximilian  I  auf  urkundlicher  Grund- 
lage  dargestelt.  Stuttgart,  1884.  2  volumes. 

VALOR  ECCLESIASTICUS  TEMP.    Henr.  VIII.    1810-1834.    6  volumes. 

VASARI,  GIORGIO.    Vite  de'  Pittori. 

VILLARI,   PASQUALE.    Niccolo   Machiavelli.    Milano,  1895. 

VIRGILI,  F.  BERNI.    Firenze,  1881. 

WILKINS,  DAVID.  Concilia  Magnae  Britanniae,  etc.  Londini,  1737. 
4  volumes. 

ZIMMERMAN,  ATHANASIUS.  Kardinal  Pole  seine  Leben  und  seine 
Schriften.  Regensburg,  1893. 

ZURICH  LETTERS,  THE.    Parker  Society.    Cambridge,  1842. 


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